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.

Over the past three years, Endpoints News has spotlighted 60 women who have blazed trails and supercharged R&D across the biopharma world. And judging from the response we’ve received, to both our special reports and live events, telling their stories — including any obstacles they may have had to overcome — has inspired our readers in many different ways.

But change takes time, and the fact remains that women are still underrepresented at the upper ranks of the drug-making world.

The FDA is still wary about a trial testing a microbiome therapy in patients with steroid-resistant acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD).

A year after MaaT Pharma’s IND application in the US was first met with a clinical hold, the French biotech said the agency is maintaining the hold. The crux of the matter, MaaT suggested, has to do with the way it puts together its drug candidate, which is administered as an enema (i.e. an injection of fluid into the bowel).

Pfizer is launching its second-ever rebate program, this time for Panzyga, its treatment for a rare neurological disease of the peripheral nerves.

The program began last month, according to STAT which first reported the news, and offers a refund of out-of-pocket costs for patients who must discontinue their course before the fifth treatment for “clinical reasons.”

Panzyga was approved back in 2018 to treat primary immunodeficiency (PI) in patients two years and older and chronic immune thrombocytopenia (cITP) in adults. It has since picked up an indication in chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), a condition that’s characterized by weakness of the arms or legs, tingling or numbness, and a loss of deep tendon reflexes, according to the NIH.