In­trin­sic want­ed an IPO. In­stead, it's a SPAC for the gut-brain mi­cro­bio­me biotech

Fi­nanc­ing is es­sen­tial to drug de­vel­op­ment.

In­trin­sic Med­i­cine couldn’t suc­ceed down the IPO route dur­ing a rough sweep­ing of the biotech mar­ket this year, so the Seat­tle up­start is in­stead go­ing with a blank-check to get its first mi­cro­bio­me-based can­di­date in­to a clin­i­cal tri­al in Aus­tralia.

Af­ter ditch­ing its IPO plans in Ju­ly, the biotech will in­stead com­bine with Phoenix Biotech Ac­qui­si­tion, a SPAC ve­hi­cle that looked at more than 90 com­pa­nies be­fore sign­ing on the dot­ted line with In­trin­sic, the com­pa­nies said Mon­day morn­ing. The SPAC tie-up adds to a grow­ing list of blank check deals in re­cent weeks af­ter the mar­ket had ap­peared to large­ly cool off ear­li­er in the year.

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