Bil­lion­aires Chamath Pal­i­hapi­tiya and Pablo Legor­re­ta hatch an $825M SPAC for cell ther­a­py biotech

Three years af­ter Roy­al­ty Phar­ma chief Pablo Legor­re­ta led a group of in­vestors to buy up a pair of biotechs and cre­ate a new start­up called ProKid­ney, the biotech is jump­ing straight in­to an $825 mil­lion pub­lic shell cre­at­ed by SPAC king and tech bil­lion­aire Chamath Pal­i­hapi­tiya.

ProKid­ney was found­ed 6 years ago but re­al­ly got go­ing at the be­gin­ning of 2019 with the $62 mil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of in­Re­gen, which was work­ing on an au­tol­o­gous — from the pa­tient — cell ther­a­py for kid­ney dis­ease. Af­ter ex­tract­ing kid­ney cells from pa­tients, re­searchers ex­pand the cells in the lab and then in­ject them back in­to pa­tients, aim­ing to re­store the kid­neys of pa­tients suf­fer­ing from CKD.

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