Omid Farokhzad

Omid Farokhzad didn’t have to trav­el far to find a pri­vate biotech he want­ed to take pub­lic with his $200 mil­lion blank-check com­pa­ny.

Sen­ti Bio — the syn­thet­ic bi­ol­o­gy play launched and now helmed by MIT whiz Tim Lu — will be merg­ing with Farokhzad’s Dy­nam­ics Spe­cial Pur­pose Corp., the com­pa­nies an­nounced Mon­day morn­ing, in a deal set to de­liv­er $296 mil­lion in gross pro­ceeds.

Us­ing a gene cir­cuit tech­nol­o­gy plat­form out of Lu’s lab, Sen­ti promis­es to pro­gram “sense-com­pute-re­spond” ca­pa­bil­i­ties in­to cell and gene ther­a­pies.

The en­gi­neer­ing method promis­es to en­hance ef­fi­ca­cy, speci­fici­ty and dura­bil­i­ty — all key qual­i­ties any cell and gene ther­a­py de­vel­op­er is look­ing for.

Blue­Rock Ther­a­peu­tics, the Bay­er sub­sidiary, was one of them. Ear­li­er this year (in fact the day af­ter Farokhzad com­plet­ed the IPO for his SPAC) Blue­Rock signed on to de­ploy the tech­nol­o­gy in de­vel­op­ing new cell ther­a­pies for re­gen­er­a­tive use.

The merg­er marks a hefty en­dorse­ment from a group deeply con­nect­ed in the biotech field. The crew at Dy­nam­ics Spe­cial Pur­pose Corp in­cludes CEO Mostafa Ron­aghi, for­mer chief tech­nol­o­gy of­fi­cer at Il­lu­mi­na; CFO Mark Afrasi­abi, who had co-head­ed the in­vest­ment com­mit­tee at Sil­ver Rock Fi­nan­cial; CBO Rowan Chap­man out of J&J In­no­va­tion and three in­de­pen­dent board mem­bers: David Ep­stein, the for­mer No­var­tis phar­ma chief now at Flag­ship, for­mer Il­lu­mi­na CEO Jay Flat­ley and se­nior man­ag­ing part­ner of the Soft­Bank Vi­sion Fund, Deep Nishar.

Farokhzad, the CEO of Seer, long­time Har­vard aca­d­e­m­ic and se­r­i­al en­tre­pre­neur, praised Sen­ti’s foun­da­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy for hav­ing “game-chang­ing im­pli­ca­tions for treat­ing a va­ri­ety of can­cers, as well as po­ten­tial ap­pli­ca­tions be­yond on­col­o­gy.”

On top of the cash re­serves in­side Dy­nam­ics, ex­ist­ing SPAC in­vestors are chim­ing in to pro­vide $86 mil­lion — in­clud­ing ARK In­vest­ment Man­age­ment, funds and ac­counts man­aged by Coun­ter­point Glob­al (Mor­gan Stan­ley In­vest­ment Man­age­ment), In­vus and T. Rowe Price funds. Oth­ers, in­clud­ing 8VC, Am­gen Ven­tures, Life­Force Cap­i­tal, NEA, Park­er In­sti­tute for Can­cer Im­munother­a­py, are swelling the PIPE fi­nanc­ing by an­oth­er $66 mil­lion to a to­tal $153 mil­lion.

“With re­cent ad­vances in syn­thet­ic bi­ol­o­gy, com­pu­ta­tion, and mas­sive bi­o­log­i­cal da­ta gen­er­a­tion, I be­lieve that we have a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gi­neer in­tel­li­gent cell and gene ther­a­pies that di­rect­ly tack­le the het­ero­gene­ity and dy­nam­ic na­ture of dis­ease, which have the po­ten­tial to fun­da­men­tal­ly trans­form our ther­a­peu­tic ar­se­nal,” Lu said in a state­ment.

The new funds, he added, will fu­el the in­ter­nal pipeline as Sen­ti plans to file its first INDs in 2023 for a log­ic-gat­ed al­lo­gene­ic CAR-NK cell ther­a­py dubbed SEN­TI-202 (for acute myeloid leukemia) and an­oth­er mul­ti-armed al­lo­gene­ic CAR-NK cell ther­a­py dubbed SEN­TI-301 (for he­pa­to­cel­lu­lar car­ci­no­ma). The crew will al­so work on ad­di­tion­al can­di­dates while build­ing out clin­i­cal-scale man­u­fac­tur­ing for the off-the-shelf CAR-NK cell ther­a­pies.

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.