The biotech bear mar­ket is not leav­ing medtech com­pa­nies out of its reach, as In­tegri­ty Im­plants, aka Ac­celus, is now dis­cov­er­ing.

Ac­celus and SPAC part­ner CHP Merg­er Corp. will no longer be join­ing hands in a re­verse merg­er, the com­pa­nies an­nounced late Fri­day. The pair had an­nounced last No­vem­ber that it would at­tempt to take Ac­celus, which fo­cus­es on mak­ing min­i­mal­ly in­va­sive surgery (MIS) a stan­dard of care in spine treat­ment, pub­lic through the $482 mil­lion blank check ve­hi­cle.

Ac­cord­ing to Ac­celus, “mar­ket con­di­tions” are to blame for the SPAC de­cou­pling. The de­ci­sion takes place af­ter a bruis­ing first quar­ter in the mar­kets, with few biotechs go­ing pub­lic and many re­or­ga­niz­ing their pipelines and en­gag­ing in lay­offs.

Chris Walsh

When the merg­er was first an­nounced, Ac­celus CEO and co-founder Chris Walsh was slat­ed to helm the new com­pa­ny af­ter more than two decades in the space. Out­side of Ac­celus, Walsh spent more than a decade at San Diego de­vice mak­er Nu­Va­sive and about sev­en years in the spine team at Stryk­er, a Michi­gan med­ical tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny.

“In light of mar­ket con­di­tions, we be­lieve that this strate­gic piv­ot will best en­able our team to ex­e­cute on our mis­sion to trans­form the spine surgery space by ac­cel­er­at­ing the adop­tion of MIS as the stan­dard of care,” Walsh said.

On the fi­nan­cial side of things, the com­pa­ny be­hind the SPAC, CHP Merg­er Corp., has de­cid­ed to liq­ui­date — which will of­fi­cial­ly hap­pen next Mon­day. No specifics were giv­en as to how much the liq­ui­da­tion will be, but CHP Merg­er Corp. had gone the IPO route back in 2019, an­nounc­ing its plans to raise $275 mil­lion via the pub­lic mar­ket, rais­ing 27.5 mil­lion shares at $10 a share.

CHP is backed by an af­fil­i­ate of health­care VC Con­cord Health Part­ners.

The FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence has been a bright spot within the agency in terms of speeding new treatments to patients. That flexibility was on full display this morning as FDA released new draft guidance spelling out exactly how oncology drug developers can fulfill both the accelerated and full approval’s requirements with just a single randomized controlled trial.

While Congress recently passed legislation that will allow FDA to require confirmatory trials to be recruiting and ongoing prior to granting an accelerated approval, the agency is now making clear that the initial trial used to win the AA, if designed appropriately, can also serve as the trial for converting the accelerated approval into a full approval.

Digital therapeutics company Better Therapeutics announced on Thursday that it’s cutting 35% of its staff as it awaits FDA clearance for its first product.

The company, which launched eight years ago, is one of a growing group of companies seeking a digital alternative to traditional medicine. The space saw a record $7.5 billion in investments in 2021, according to Chris Dokomajilar at DealForma, with uses spanning ADHD, PTSD and other indications. However, private insurers have been slow to hop on board.