Rallybio has steered its way to a new reverse merger, inking a deal with Avenzo Therapeutics weeks after a UCB buyout took its former partner off the market.
After a series of setbacks, Rallybio agreed to a reverse merger with Candid Therapeutics in March. The deal offered Candid a route to the Nasdaq. However, UCB hijacked the deal when it agreed to buy Candid for $2 billion in May. Rallybio was entitled to a $50 million termination fee, but the loss of the reverse merger left it needing a new direction.
Enter Avenzo. The San Diego-based biotech has agreed to merge with Rallybio in a deal that will give its shareholders 97.2% of the combined company. Alongside the merger, Avenzo is raising $215 million from new investors such as Blackstone and existing backers including OrbiMed.
The money, which is forecast to fund operations into late 2028, will support development of four clinical programs. Avenzo has ex-China rights to CDK2 and CDK4 inhibitors and to two bispecific antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), all of which are in phase 1 development.
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Avenzo shared phase 1 data on the CDK2 inhibitor, AVZO-021, on Monday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago. Across all monotherapy doses, median progression-free survival in 33 HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer patients was 5.3 months. The participants had received a median of four prior therapies.
The company plans to use the funding to generate initial clinical data on the combination of AVZO-021 or its CDK4 inhibitor AVZO-023 with fulvestrant, which AstraZeneca markets as Faslodex. Avenzo expects to report updated phase 1 data on the fulvestrant and AVZO-023 combination this year.
Phase 1 data on the two bispecific ADCs are also scheduled for this year. One asset, AVZO-103, targets Nectin4 and TROP2 and is being developed as a treatment for tumor types including urothelial cancer. The other asset, AVZO-1418, targets EGFR and HER3 and has been studied in more than 30 patients across multiple solid tumors.
