Biotech launched dur­ing Covid — for Covid — looks for strate­gic al­ter­na­tives af­ter an­tivi­ral fails PhII tri­al

A next-gen Covid-19 an­tivi­ral has flunked a Phase II test, forc­ing its de­vel­op­er to go in­to some se­ri­ous soul search­ing.

The mid-stage read­out was cru­cial for Pardes Bio­sciences, which em­bod­ied some of the hottest top­ics be­tween 2020 and 2021: It launched at the height of the pan­dem­ic on the promise of de­liv­er­ing a pill to treat Covid-19, and lat­er went pub­lic via a SPAC merg­er. Fore­site, Gilead, RA Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment and Fra­zier Life Sci­ences helped bankroll the SPAC deal, which gave Pardes $250 mil­lion to work with.

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