Cancer imaging company Kuva Labs is expanding its scope via the acquisition of solid tumor biotech Lisata Therapeutics.
The big prize for Kuva is certepetide, Lisata’s cyclic peptide drug that the company has been evaluating in a range of phase 2 studies for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, cholangiocarcinoma and appendiceal cancers. The cyclic peptide undergoes a process called protease-mediated cleavage in the tumor, producing a C-end Rule or “CendR” peptide that enables transport across the tumor stroma and improves delivery of anticancer drugs.
Kuva’s experience of certepetide stretches back to November 2024, when the company licensed the drug to use with its own NanoMark platform to help create a new class of magnetic resonance imaging agents to detect tumors.
Now, Kuva wants to bring certepetide and its owner in-house. Kuva has offered $4 per share of Lisata—an 85% increase on the $2.16 that Lisata’s stock closed at Tuesday.
On top of that cash payment, Lisata’s stockholders could be in line for an additional $2 per share should Kuva both resecure the Chinese rights to certepetide from its partner Qilu Pharmaceutical and submit the drug for approval in any country.
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Lisata was formed in 2022 from the merger of Caladrius Biosciences and Cend Therapeutics. The resulting company was tasked with taking forward Cend’s lead candidate certepetide, which at that point was still known as CEND-1.
Certepetide has also attracted interest from the likes of CDMO Catalent, which in October secured the right to evaluate the drug as a potential payload for antibody-drug conjugates.
