After banking two $50 million venture rounds about a year apart, Surrozen is ready to hit Wall Street. The company plans to go public via SPAC in a deal worth up to $212 million.
The regenerative medicine player is combining with Consonance-HFW Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company sponsored by affiliates of Consonance Capital Management. If all goes to plan, the deal will close in the third quarter and the combined company will receive $92 million from the SPAC, as well as $120 million through a private round. It will list on the Nasdaq under the ticker “SRZN.”
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The proceeds will propel Surrozen’s lead programs in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and severe alcoholic hepatitis into the clinic and advance a clutch of earlier-stage candidates spanning a wide range of disease areas.
“Surrozen is dedicated to transforming treatment of serious disease by fully exploiting the Wnt pathway,” said Surrozen CEO Craig Parker, in a statement on Thursday. “This financing supports that mission with experienced life sciences investors and capital.”
The company is targeting the Wnt (rhymes with mint) pathway to create regenerative medicines for diseases of the eye, lung, kidney, cochlea, skin, pancreas and central nervous system, in addition to the liver and gut. It plans to start phase 1 studies for its lead programs in 2022 and file INDs for its other programs starting in 2023.
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Although alcoholic hepatitis develops over time, severe alcoholic hepatitis can come on suddenly and quickly lead to liver failure and death. Today, the condition is treated with corticosteroids, but there is debate on how effective they are. If steroids don’t work, the only option is a liver transplant, which can be difficult to secure.
Surrozen’s severe alcoholic hepatitis treatment, SZN-043, is designed to trigger regeneration of hepatocytes, or liver cells, boosting liver function and reducing scarring. Durect is taking a similar approach with DUR-928, a naturally occurring epigenetic regulator, which stimulates certain genes to get the body to repair itself.
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Surrozen may be starting with severe alcoholic hepatitis, but if it can get SZN-043 successfully through proof of concept, other chronic and acute liver diseases could be on the table. As for its IBD program, it’s a bispecific antibody targeting Fxd5/8 and Lrp6. Dubbed SZN-1326, the treatment is designed to restore Wnt signaling and repair the tissue lining the gut in an approach that could be combined with anti-inflammatory drugs.