An­oth­er blank check com­pa­ny has filed to ride the biotech IPO wave, which shows no sign of crash­ing any­time soon.

Turmer­ic Ac­qui­si­tion, a spe­cial pur­pose ac­qui­si­tion com­pa­ny formed by Boston-based MPM Cap­i­tal, an­nounced on Mon­day that it’s look­ing for a $100 mil­lion raise. It will be one of sev­er­al to hit Nas­daq in a his­toric year for SPACs. It’s not clear which biotechs are in Tumer­ic’s sights — but it says it’s go­ing af­ter in­no­v­a­tive com­pa­nies with “new modal­i­ties”.

“For many years, drug de­vel­op­ment in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and biotech in­dus­tries has been dom­i­nat­ed by two modal­i­ties: small mol­e­cules and pro­tein bi­o­log­ics (such as an­ti­bod­ies). How­ev­er, in re­cent years, new modal­i­ties have emerged with land­mark ap­provals by the US FDA and the Eu­ro­pean Med­i­cines Agency. These new modal­i­ties in­clude cell ther­a­pies, gene ther­a­pies, and nu­cle­ic acid ther­a­pies, in­clud­ing RNA ther­a­pies […] We be­lieve New Modal­i­ties have the po­ten­tial to in­crease the rate of in­no­va­tion and trans­la­tion of sci­ence in­to trans­for­ma­tive ther­a­pies,” Tumer­ic’s S-1 fil­ing states.

Back in 2014, SPACs were 3% of the IPO mar­ket. In Ju­ly, Nas­daq’s head of cap­i­tal mar­kets Jay Heller told End­points News they were al­most 35% of all new list­ings. Last week, it was 5:01 Ac­qui­si­tion — a 5AM Ven­tures-backed blank check com­pa­ny — fil­ing to go pub­lic, seek­ing an $80 mil­lion raise.

More than 50 biotechs have filed for IPOs this year, Nas­daq head of health­care list­ings Jor­dan Saxe told End­points last week. On Fri­day, 56 biotechs had raised $11.3 bil­lion. Saxe made a low-end es­ti­mate that there will be 65-70 biotech IPOs by the end of the year.

Eli Lilly is fronting some new cash in a space they’re quite familiar with.

The company is partnering with Japan’s Asahi Kasei Pharma on an experimental drug for chronic pain, acquiring the rights for the P2X7 receptor antagonist program dubbed AK1780. Lilly will shell out a pretty penny for the program, promising up to $410 million total should each milestone payment come to pass.

Asahi Kasei will receive an upfront sum of $20 million for the candidate. In addition, Lilly is on the hook for up to $210 million in development and regulatory milestones and another potential $180 million in sales milestones. Asahi Kasei can also obtain royalties ranging from the mid-single to low-double digits should an approved product come out of the deal.

One of the world’s leading CDMOs has launched a new technology it says will expedite a quickly-growing sect of biotech drug development: off-the-shelf, allogeneic cell therapies.

It’s been nearly a decade since the FDA approved the first use of the method that uses healthy donor cells to create a master cell bank, which is then used for specific therapies — a cord blood allogeneic treatment called Hemacord. In the years since, the use of allogeneic cells has taken off in research circles, most notably in the use of T cell therapies to target solid tumor cancers.

Nearly a year ago, as the pandemic encroached and the stock market cratered, Flagship and ARCH Venture announced three mega-funds worth a combined $2.6 billion. They wanted, ARCH’s Bob Nelsen said, to restore confidence “that there was money out there and a lot of it” to invest in biotech.

Since then, the stock market has returned — almost frighteningly so — and Nelsen has kept raising and spending cash. On Thursday, he announced a new fund, worth $1.85 billion. It’s the largest pot yet for a VC famous for its deep pockets.