An­ti-ag­ing com­pa­ny Hu­man Longevi­ty, found­ed by pi­o­neer­ing ge­nom­ic re­searcher Craig Ven­ter, is one step clos­er, po­ten­tial­ly, to be­com­ing a pub­lic com­pa­ny.

The start­up put out a press re­lease Mon­day af­ter­noon say­ing it has signed a “let­ter of in­tent” to re­verse merge with a SPAC run by for­mer Cred­it Su­isse CEO Tid­jane Thi­am, known as Free­dom Ac­qui­si­tion I Corp. If none of the SPAC in­vestors re­deem their shares and pull out at the float price of $10, Hu­man Longevi­ty will re­ceive $345 mil­lion.

Ven­ter’s for­mer com­pa­ny made sure to em­pha­size that Mon­day’s an­nounce­ment was far from a done deal, how­ev­er. Hu­man Longevi­ty made sev­er­al men­tions in its re­lease that there is no “as­sur­ance” the deal will go through. The en­ti­ties al­so did not file an SEC re­port, typ­i­cal­ly the stan­dard when an­nounc­ing a SPAC deal.

If the merg­er does take place, it will like­ly oc­cur in the third quar­ter this year and close in the first quar­ter of 2023, the com­pa­nies said. There was no in­for­ma­tion on a po­ten­tial PIPE fi­nanc­ing.

The Fi­nan­cial Times was the first to re­port that Ven­ter and Thi­am’s com­pa­nies were in SPAC merg­er dis­cus­sions.

Hu­man Longevi­ty got start­ed back in 2013 and of­fers ge­nom­ic se­quenc­ing and blood tests to clients, of­fer­ing per­son­al­ized meth­ods to fight ag­ing-re­lat­ed dis­eases. The com­pa­ny soon found it­self in a tu­mul­tuous pe­ri­od as Ven­ter was ac­cused of steal­ing trade se­crets as part of back-and-forth law­suits in 2018.

Though the com­pa­ny is seek­ing to raise $345 mil­lion through the re­verse-merg­er dance to Nas­daq, there’s no guar­an­tee it will do so giv­en the cur­rent mar­ket con­di­tions. Be­cause SPAC in­vestors don’t know the merg­er tar­get when they sign up, some re­tain the op­tion to take their mon­ey back out, with in­ter­est, at the SPAC’s IPO price — known as re­deem­ing shares.

With SPAC ac­tiv­i­ty falling from the pan­dem­ic-fu­eled boom of late 2020 and ear­ly 2021, Thi­am’s blank check com­pa­ny may see in­vestors re­deem their shares. Such a move would ring fa­mil­iar with the Sen­ti Bio SPAC con­sum­mat­ed ear­li­er this month, when the Tim Lu-run biotech net­ted on­ly $84.5 mil­lion of the $230 mil­lion avail­able in the SPAC trust, and $140.3 mil­lion over­all.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Free­dom Ac­qui­si­tion I Corp. has strug­gled to re­tain spon­sors, re­veal­ing in an SEC fil­ing this month that Pim­co, the world’s largest bond man­ag­er, gave up its SPAC stake. Pim­co was re­placed by an ad­vi­so­ry firm, Next G, af­fil­i­at­ed with Chi­nese en­tre­pre­neur Ed­ward Zeng.

Ireland has been on a roll in 2022, with several large pharma companies announcing multimillion-euro projects. Now AstraZeneca’s rare disease outfit Alexion is looking to get in on the action.

Alexion on Friday announced a €65 million ($68.8 million) investment in new and enhanced capabilities across two sites in the country, including at College Park in the Dublin suburb of Blanchardstown and the Monksland Industrial Park in the central Irish town of Athlone, according to the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland.

Amidst recently broader vaccine manufacturing initiatives from the EU and European companies, the G7 summit in the mountains of Bavaria has brought about some positive news for closing vaccine and medical product manufacturing gaps around the globe.

According to a statement from the White House, the G7 leaders have formally launched the partnership for global infrastructure, PGII. The effort will aim to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars to deliver infrastructure projects in several sectors including the medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing space.

Another biotech standing on shaky financial legs has fallen victim to the bears.

Merck partner 4D Pharma has reported that a key lender, Oxford Finance, shoved the UK company into administration after calling in a $14 million loan they couldn’t immediately make good on. Trading in their stock was halted with a market cap that had fallen to a mere £30 million.

“Despite the very difficult prevailing market conditions,” 4D reported on Friday, the biotech had been making progress on finding some new financing and turned to Oxford with an alternative late on Thursday and then again Friday morning.

Some Celgene shareholders aren’t happy with how Bristol Myers Squibb’s takeover went down.

On Friday, a New York federal judge ruled that they have a case against the pharma giant, denying a request to dismiss allegations that it purposely slow-rolled Breyanzi’s approval to avoid paying out $6.4 billion in contingent value rights (CVR).

When Bristol Myers put down $74 billion to scoop up Celgene back in 2019, liso-cel — the CAR-T lymphoma treatment now marketed as Breyanzi — was supposedly one of the centerpieces of the deal. After going back and forth on negotiations for about six months, BMS put $6.4 billion into a CVR agreement that required an FDA approval for Zeposia, Breyanzi and Abecma, each by an established date.