The Covid-19 trans­genic cow an­ti­body start­up goes pub­lic in $325M SPAC merg­er

The trans­genic cows are go­ing pub­lic.

SAB Bio­ther­a­peu­tics, the Sioux Falls, SD com­pa­ny try­ing to ex­tract an­ti­body treat­ments from ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied cows, an­nounced Tues­day they would merge with the life sci­ence-fo­cused SPAC Big Cy­press Ac­qui­si­tion Corp. The deal will val­ue the com­pa­ny at $325 mil­lion and equip them with $118 mil­lion.

That’s pen­nies next to some of the oth­er biotechs to go pub­lic with SPACs in the past year: Va­lo Health, val­ued at $2.8 bil­lion, or 23andMe, val­ued at $3.5 bil­lion. But it’s a sig­nif­i­cant leap for SAB, a com­pa­ny that pre­vi­ous­ly re­lied on gov­ern­ment grants and mod­est ven­ture rounds as they fo­cused on in­fec­tious dis­eases — a field long over­looked by VCs and phar­ma pri­or to Covid-19.

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