Privately held Mentari Therapeutics plans to hit the public markets through a reverse merger with InMed Pharmaceuticals, creating a combined company focused on antibody drugs that can prevent migraines.
The deal, announced Tuesday, has already received approval from the boards of both parties and is expected to close in the back half of this year. Terms hold that InMed shareholders would own roughly 1.5% of the combined company, which is slated to have a pro forma equity value of about $421 million. Baked into that value is a concurrent private placement that will result in gross proceeds of approximately $290 million.
The private placement was led by Fairmount, a Pennsylvania-based investment firm, and saw participation from more than a dozen other backers, including Blackstone Multi-Asset Investing, Wellington Management, a16z Bio + Health and Perceptive Advisors. The haul should support the combined company — which will operate under the Mentari name — through 2028. By that time, Mentari anticipates having clinical data for its two lead programs.
Those programs were discovered at Paragon Therapeutics, a prolific “hub-and-spoke” biotech incubator that has spun out a handful of companies developing drugs for cancer, immune system disorders and neurological diseases. With Mentari, Paragon is exploring whether migraines can be avoided through the inhibition of a nervous system protein known as PACAP. This protein regulates stress and, when triggered, causes pain-sensing nerves to fire and blood vessels in the head to drastically widen.
