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Just a few days af­ter EQRx an­nounced its in­tent to merge with Eli Cas­din’s third blank check com­pa­ny, an­oth­er SPAC deal is wrapped up and ready for Nas­daq.

RNA tech firm Green­Light Bio­sciences will re­verse merge its way to the pub­lic mar­ket, the com­pa­ny an­nounced Tues­day morn­ing, net­ting the biotech a rough­ly $1.5 bil­lion val­u­a­tion. Green­Light will merge with the SPAC En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact Ac­qui­si­tion Corp., which is backed by Canac­cord Ge­nu­ity Group and Hud­son Bay Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, and will get $207 mil­lion from the SPAC as well as $105 mil­lion in PIPE fi­nanc­ing.

Green­Light is work­ing on sev­er­al ex­per­i­men­tal vac­cines us­ing mR­NA tech­nol­o­gy, in­clud­ing for sea­son­al flu, Covid-19 and sick­le cell dis­ease. Ex­ecs have set out a “blue­print to vac­ci­nate the world,” ar­gu­ing that mR­NA man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties are not up to snuff. Green­Light has pro­posed build­ing sev­en new mR­NA man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties to try to com­bat this is­sue.

But the Med­ford, MA-based com­pa­ny got its start try­ing to shake up the pes­ti­cides mar­ket for in­dus­tri­al agri­cul­ture, spend­ing most of its ear­ly ef­forts here since be­ing found­ed in 2008 be­fore piv­ot­ing to hu­man health in late 2019, ear­ly 2020. CEO An­drey Zarur told End­points News that Green­Light’s plat­form com­bines two mR­NA ap­proach­es — one that in­volves fer­men­ta­tion-based process­es and an­oth­er uti­lized by high-pro­file com­pa­nies like Mod­er­na and BioN­Tech in­volv­ing tran­scrip­tion.

This “hy­brid” mod­el, Zarur said, can hope­ful­ly en­able Green­Light to pro­duce mR­NA-based prod­ucts at a much high­er scale and much low­er cost than the big­ger names. The re­sult is what the com­pa­ny calls “cell-free bio­pro­cess­ing.”

“We use the same types of cells that are used to make an­ti­bod­ies, used in fer­men­ta­tion process,” Zarur said. “They’re very in­ex­pen­sive and com­mon­ly used. We grow them, then we har­vest the raw ma­te­ri­als. It’s no dif­fer­ent than if plant­i­ng plants and har­vest­ing the fruits.”

Zarur added that Green­Light had nev­er planned on stop­ping at agri­cul­ture, but it was the first ap­pli­ca­tion where the com­pa­ny di­rect­ed its plat­form. He tout­ed Green­Light’s sci­en­tif­ic ad­vi­so­ry pan­el, in­clud­ing famed UPenn mR­NA re­searcher Drew Weiss­man, as piv­otal to help­ing the com­pa­ny branch out in­to life sci­ences a cou­ple years ago.

“When we de­cid­ed to move in­to hu­man health­care, we didn’t do it blind­ly,” Zarur said. “We didn’t do this half-assed.”

This past spring, Green­Light wel­comed a for­mer GSK Vac­cines staffer to help fur­ther things along in Amin Khan. Khan, a mem­ber of the group’s R&D lead­er­ship team, is at least the fourth GSK Vac­cines ex­ec to leave the com­pa­ny in the last sev­er­al months as it wait­ed and fell far be­hind in the Covid-19 hunt.

Be­fore Khan came Jef­frey Ul­mer, who de­part­ed in Ju­ly 2020; Amir Re­ich­man, for­mer head of glob­al vac­cines en­gi­neer­ing core tech­nolo­gies, who left in Jan­u­ary 2021; and Em­manuel Hanon, the for­mer chief of vac­cines re­search, who took a new job this past April. GSK al­so saw their pres­i­dent of US phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Jack Bai­ley, de­part in the sum­mer of 2020 to take the CEO gig at G1 Ther­a­peu­tics.

With the glut of SPAC pric­ings hav­ing slowed down from ear­li­er this year, more and more blank check com­pa­nies are find­ing part­ners to bring to Nas­daq. More than $18 bil­lion has flowed in­to the biotech sec­tor alone, per the End­points News tal­ly, fol­low­ing near­ly a dozen merg­ers an­nounced in the sec­ond quar­ter. Green­Light is the fourth biotech SPAC to an­nounce its merg­er so far in the third quar­ter.

Eliem com­pletes rapid IPO rise

Eliem Ther­a­peu­tics has com­plet­ed its quick as­cent to Nas­daq af­ter emerg­ing from stealth just this past March, rais­ing $80 mil­lion and pric­ing shares at $12.50 apiece.

The biotech had like­ly been work­ing on an IPO for a lit­tle while, as it had de­clined in­ter­view re­quests af­ter a $60 mil­lion Se­ries B back in May. Eliem is mak­ing its pub­lic de­but with a pipeline of four neu­ro as­sets led by a pro­drug of an en­do­cannabi­noid known as palmi­toylethanolamide, or PEA.

Re­search for the com­pound had been in pos­ses­sion by RA Cap­i­tal, where Eliem was in­cu­bat­ed. Eliem’s lead can­di­date ETX-810 is cur­rent­ly in two Phase IIa stud­ies look­ing at di­a­bet­ic pe­riph­er­al neu­ro­path­ic pain and lum­bosacral radic­u­lar pain. Da­ta read­outs are ex­pect­ed for the first half of 2022.

RA Cap­i­tal is the big win­ner of the IPO, as the firm con­trolled more than 52% of shares be­fore the of­fer­ing. Post-of­fer­ing, RA will still own about a 40% stake, ac­cord­ing to the S-1. The firm AI ETI, backed by Ac­cess In­dus­tries Hold­ings, al­so takes home a 16.9% stake once the of­fer­ing con­cludes.

And Va­lerie Moris­set, the long­time pain re­searcher who took the CSO job at Eliem, will win an IPO prize as well. Mor­riset gets 1.2% of shares post-of­fer­ing.

Eliem will trade un­der the tick­er $ELYM.