A SPAC deal an­nounced in Au­gust may need a bit more time to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s.

Ocean Bio­med­ical and its blank check part­ner, Aes­ther Health­care Ac­qui­si­tion Corp., ex­tend­ed the dead­line to wrap their merg­er talks by three months, they said Fri­day. The two en­ti­ties will now have un­til March 16, 2023, to merge and bring Ocean to Nas­daq.

This is the sec­ond time Aes­ther and Ocean have ex­tend­ed their merg­er dead­line, and it’s the last time they’ll be able to do so. Should they be un­able to fin­ish their dis­cus­sions and put to­geth­er the req­ui­site raise, the SPAC will have to re­turn its mon­ey to in­vestors.

The merg­er has proven em­blem­at­ic of the 2022 biotech bear mar­ket, as Ocean was one of sev­er­al can­di­dates Aes­ther sought to com­bine with. Talks pre­vi­ous­ly fell apart with at least three po­ten­tial part­ners, in­clud­ing an elec­tric ve­hi­cle parts mak­er, be­fore Ocean and Aes­ther agreed to re­verse-merge.

Flag­ship biotech re­fi­nances debt

A Flag­ship-found­ed biotech is look­ing to se­cure more cash through a loan.

Evelo Bio­sciences is bor­row­ing $45 mil­lion from Hori­zon Tech­nol­o­gy Fi­nance Cor­po­ra­tion, the com­pa­ny an­nounced Fri­day, in or­der to re­fi­nance its ex­ist­ing debt that would have start­ed af­fect­ing its bal­ance sheet next March. The new loan al­lows Evelo to on­ly pay in­ter­est for three years on most of the new loan, be­fore a two-year pe­ri­od where it would have to re­pay the rest.

$35 mil­lion of the to­tal $45 mil­lion will be sub­ject to this, while the re­main­ing $10 mil­lion will be re­paid on Jan. 1, 2028, when the loan ma­tures, ac­cord­ing to SEC fil­ings.

The out­stand­ing loan bal­ance will al­so be charged in­ter­est at one of two rates. It can be charged at 11% in­ter­est, or it can be charged at what­ev­er the Wall Street Jour­nal’s “Prime Rate” plus “Loan Rate Spread” is list­ed as, whichev­er is high­er.

Evelo al­so “re­paid in full all out­stand­ing in­debt­ed­ness” to its pre­vi­ous lender, K2 HealthVen­tures.

DC District Court Judge Christopher Cooper today granted Vanda Pharma’s request to require the FDA to disclose more info on the complete response letter for its sleep disorder drug Hetlioz.

The melatonin receptor agonist is approved by the FDA to treat non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder, a circadian rhythm disorder. But in 2018 Vanda filed a supplemental application to market Hetlioz as a treatment for jet lag, which the FDA rejected in August 2019, with few details on what Vanda needed to correct course, according to the company.