Jim Tananbaum, Foresite Capital CEO (Business Wire)

Gilead, Fore­site take an un­known pan­dem­ic an­tivi­ral pub­lic in $250M SPAC deal

The SPAC boom has pro­duced some sur­pris­ing deals but gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, peo­ple fol­low­ing the in­dus­try have at least heard of the com­pa­nies go­ing pub­lic.

On Tues­day, though, Fore­site Cap­i­tal an­nounced that it would use one of its SPACs to take pub­lic Pardes Bio­sciences, a biotech that was found­ed on­ly last year and has not so much as put out a press re­lease. (Al­though they have wished peo­ple “Hap­py New Year!” and re-post­ed pan­dem­ic news ar­ti­cles on LinkedIn.) De­spite the thin on­line pres­ence, Fore­site is giv­ing Pardes the $175 mil­lion they raised for the SPAC, plus an­oth­er $75 mil­lion in pri­vate fund­ing from Gilead, RA Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment and Fra­zier Life Sci­ences.

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