Brent Saun­ders’ de­ci­sion to join the SPAC gold rush ap­pears to have paid off nice­ly, al­beit not quite as nice­ly as he and his for­mer Al­ler­gan col­leagues had hoped.

Saun­ders’ spe­cial pur­pose ac­qui­si­tion com­pa­ny Ves­per Health­care Ac­qui­si­tion raised $400 mil­lion, sell­ing 40 mil­lion shares at 10 bucks a pop. That’s a bit short of the $460 mil­lion he and for­mer Al­ler­gan ex­ec Man­isha Narasimhan had ini­tial­ly sten­ciled in as the max­i­mum po­ten­tial of­fer­ing, but it still leaves one of phar­ma’s most fa­mous — and oc­ca­sion­al­ly no­to­ri­ous — wheel­ers and deal­ers with one of the largest hauls for a life sci­ence shell com­pa­ny yet, eclips­ing the $385 mil­lion Cas­din Cap­i­tal and Corvex Man­age­ment raised ear­ly this month.

Ex­cit­ed for the next chap­ter! ⁦@Ves­per­Health⁩ https://t.co/tzF4OTvZJ5

— Brent Saun­ders (@brentl­saun­ders) Sep­tem­ber 29, 2020

Saun­ders will now have two years to find a new home for all that cash, look­ing in a hand­ful of fa­mil­iar ar­eas: med­ical aes­thet­ics, eye care, longevi­ty and well­ness.

Al­though the small hand­ful of life sci­ence SPACs to suc­cess­ful­ly merge with pri­vate com­pa­nies have large­ly been small­er, sev­er­al al­so came with ad­di­tion­al ex­ter­nal fund­ing to boost the over­all val­ue of the deal. Cerev­el, for in­stance, an­nounced they would go pub­lic ear­li­er this year on a deal that saw them merge with Per­cep­tive Ad­vi­sors’ $150 mil­lion SPAC and raise $445 mil­lion in a con­cur­rent pri­vate round.

Still, when Saun­ders first filed for the SPAC, one life sci­ences in­vestor told End­points News that it could trans­late in­to a com­pa­ny worth $1.5 bil­lion to $2 bil­lion — or in the range of what Re­lay Ther­a­peu­tics, the biggest biotech IPO in a year full of big biotech IPOs, was worth on its de­but.

And Saun­ders plans to own a de­cent chunk of the even­tu­al com­pa­ny; the S-1 not­ed he would re­tain 20% of the SPAC post-of­fer­ing.

So far, this marks just Saun­ders’ sec­ond pub­lic move since he avoid­ed a spot on Ab­b­Vie’s board post-buy­out. He al­so joined Bridge­Bio’s board, help­ing Neil Ku­mar steer an um­brel­la of com­pa­nies try­ing to rein­vent biotech.

For a man who very re­cent­ly had the work­ing hours of a Big Phar­ma CEO, that pre­sum­ably leaves room on his plate for more.

Several countries had restarted their portions of AstraZeneca’s global Phase III Covid-19 vaccine trial after the study was paused worldwide in early September, but the US notably stayed on the sidelines — until now. Friday afternoon the pharma giant announced the all clear from US regulators. And on top of that, J&J announced Friday evening that it’s preparing to resume its own Phase III vaccine trial.

Since before Ilan Ganot started Solid Bio to develop a gene therapy for kids like his son, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Ultragenyx CEO Emil Kakkis has been watching and advising the former investment banker as he navigated the deep waters of drug development.

Just as Solid is getting back up on its feet after a yearlong clinical hold, Kakkis has decided to jump in for a formal alliance.

With a $40 million upfront, Ultragenyx is grabbing 14.45% of Solid’s shares $SLDB and the rights to its microdystrophin construct for use in combination with AAV8 vectors. Solid’s lead program, which utilizes AAV9, remains unaffected. The company also retains rights to other applications of its transgene.

After flying high on Wall Street for the last few months of a pandemic, BiondVax’s stock and dreams of getting approval for its universal flu vaccine hit the windshield.

The Jerusalem-based biotech announced on Friday that its only clinical candidate, M-001, failed both primary and secondary endpoints in a Phase III study. There was no statistically significant difference in reduction of flu illness and severity between the vaccine and placebo groups, according to the company. The vaccine did prove safe, if ineffective, BiondVax said.

It’s been a record year for biotech IPOs, and the execs at Nasdaq would like nothing better than to see that momentum continue into the first half of next year.

Since January, 72 biotech and biopharma companies have hit Wall Street, according to Nasdaq head of healthcare listings Jordan Saxe, together raising $13.2 billion.

The latest is Flagship’s Foghorn Therapeutics, which priced its shares last night at $16 apiece, the midpoint of a $15 to $17 range. The Cambridge, MA-based biotech — which initially filed for a $100 million raise on Oct. 2 — is netting $120 million from a 7.5 million-share offering. The proceeds will go right into its gene traffic control platform, including two lead preclinical oncology candidates.