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The lat­est biotech-SPAC deal has ar­rived, and it’s danc­ing its way to Nas­daq to the tune of sev­er­al hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars.

Tan­go Ther­a­peu­tics and its CRISPR-fo­cused search for new can­cer genes is re­verse merg­ing with Box­er Cap­i­tal’s blank-check com­pa­ny, the biotech an­nounced Wednes­day morn­ing. With a spot­light on three lead pro­grams, Tan­go ex­pects to­tal pro­ceeds to equal about $353 mil­lion in the deal, which in­cludes the rough­ly $167 mil­lion held in the SPAC and an ad­di­tion­al $186 mil­lion in PIPE fi­nanc­ing.

CEO Bar­bara We­ber told End­points News that Tan­go had been plan­ning for a tra­di­tion­al IPO at some point this year, hav­ing re­cent­ly fin­ished non-deal road­shows with about 30 to 40 in­vestors. But they shift­ed gears when Box­er, who had pre­vi­ous­ly led the com­pa­ny’s Se­ries B in April 2020, ap­proached Tan­go ex­ecs with the SPAC idea.

“When we looked at the in­vestors that were in the SPAC, they were the same list of peo­ple that we had just spent two months talk­ing to,” We­ber told End­points. “We ac­tu­al­ly didn’t look at any oth­er SPACs; this was a spe­cif­ic de­ci­sion around the Box­er-spon­sored SPAC.”

Blank check com­pa­nies have tak­en Wall Street by storm, and the bio­phar­ma sec­tor has not been left out of the fun. Per an End­points News tal­ly, Tan­go is the fifth life sci­ences com­pa­ny to ride a SPAC to Nas­daq this year, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of 23andMe, Se­ma4, So­ma­Log­ic and Bet­ter Ther­a­peu­tics.

That’s brought in a hefty heap­ing of cash for these fa­bled five, with the group net­ting a com­bined $2.67 bil­lion — or more than half the to­tal raised by the 30 biotechs that went pub­lic through the usu­al IPO in 2021.

And there’s plen­ty more mon­ey wait­ing in the wings. Since the start of this year alone, an­oth­er 31 SPACs have launched and have yet to find a part­ner. This group has a com­bined $7.8 bil­lion wait­ing in their shell ac­counts and in­cludes SPACs from promi­nent in­vestors such as Fore­site, Per­cep­tive, Ed­uar­do Bra­vo and Vin­od Khosla, the lat­ter of whom launched three.

The blank-check com­pa­nies can take up to two years to find a part­ner, and some an­a­lysts have sig­naled an on­com­ing glut giv­en the sheer amount of SPACs go­ing pub­lic over the last sev­er­al months. Ac­cord­ing to fig­ures from SPACIn­sid­er, there have been 308 SPACs in 2021 al­ready, sur­pass­ing the amount from the last two years, when 2020 saw 248 and 2019 had 57.

For Tan­go, though, that means they can con­tin­ue push­ing their CRISPR-based ap­proach to find­ing new tar­get­ed can­cer drugs. The biotech takes ad­van­tage of CRISPR as a re­search tool, us­ing it to dis­cov­er gene pair tar­gets that cre­ate unique vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in can­cer cells. It’s sim­i­lar to the un­der­ly­ing the­o­ry be­hind PARP in­hibitors — drugs that go af­ter a pro­tein in pa­tients with a mu­ta­tion on one of the pro­teins used to re­pair DNA.

When us­ing CRISPR to knock out genes, Tan­go re­searchers look for those that when knocked out lead to cell death in a con­cept known as syn­thet­ic lethal­i­ty. These genes then serve as po­ten­tial tar­gets. Though this process had been the­o­rized for years, it wasn’t un­til CRISPR came along in the last decade that it be­came pos­si­ble to do with pre­ci­sion, We­ber said.

The biotech has three pro­grams it in­tends to ad­vance with Wednes­day’s funds, look­ing to file INDs in each of the next three years. First up is TNG908, an MTA-co­op­er­a­tive PRMT5 in­hibitor, ex­pect­ed in the fourth quar­ter of 2021. We­ber said the mon­ey will help gen­er­ate proof-of-con­cept da­ta for the can­di­date in dif­fer­ent tu­mor types.

There’s al­so a USP1 in­hibitor ex­pect­ed in 2022 and an undis­closed tar­get ex­pect­ed in 2023, both of which are ex­pect­ed to hit the clin­ic thanks to the run­way from these funds. The for­mer is look­ing at the treat­ment of BR­CA1-mu­tant breast, ovar­i­an and prostate can­cer, while the lat­ter is go­ing af­ter STK11-mu­tant lung can­cer.

With the tran­si­tion to be­com­ing a pub­lic com­pa­ny now un­der­way, We­ber said the next steps are to keep plug­ging away at their re­search. She’s promis­ing much more dis­cov­ery work com­ing up be­hind the three lead pro­grams.

“We are dis­cov­er­ing three to four [new] tar­gets a year, so we hope to in the fu­ture con­tin­ue to be ad­vanc­ing an IND for a new mol­e­cule, a new tar­get, every 12 to 18 months for the fore­see­able fu­ture,” We­ber said.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

ViiV Healthcare has teamed up with the UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool and three generic manufacturers to expand access to medicine that can prevent HIV.

ViiV and the Medicines Patent Pool jointly announced Thursday that the MPP signed sub-licensing agreements with Aurobindo, Cipla and Viatris to manufacture generics of a long-acting form of cabotegravir for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). As a result of the agreement, the manufacturers will be able to develop, manufacture and supply generic versions of cabotegravir LA in 90 countries — subject to regulatory approvals.