Coeptis Therapeutics is merging with special purpose acquisition company Bull Horn Holdings in a definitive deal worth around $175 million.
Coeptis Therapeutics is merging with special purpose acquisition company Bull Horn Holdings in a definitive deal worth around $175 million.
Under the terms of the agreement, Bull Horn will merge into Coeptis and be rebranded as Coeptis Therapeutics Holdings, Inc. It will also be listed on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol COEP.
David Mehalick, the current president and chief executive officer of Coeptis, will lead the merged entity as president and CEO. Bull Horn’s current chief financial officer Chris Calise will also join the Coeptis board of directors after the deal closes.
The companies expect the merger to be finalized by the third quarter of 2022, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing procedures and conditions. Bridgeway Capital Partners and Meister Seelig & Fein are financial and legal advisors for Coeptis, while Jones Trading and Ellenoff Grossman & Schole are financial and legal advisors for Bull Horn.
The merger is a significant one for Coeptis, which is in need of additional capital to advance its product portfolio, especially its CD38-GEAR-NK and CD38-Diagnostic cell therapy candidates for cancer.
CD38-GEAR-NK is a natural killer (NK) cell-based therapy candidate that supports combination treatment with anti-CD38 monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). As modified cells, they can avoid ablation by therapies that target the CD38 antigen, enabling the combination of passive immunity with innate active immunity to efficiently target and remove malignancies.
CD38-Diagnostic is a pre-clinical in vitro screening tool that may help predetermine which cancer patients are the best recipients of targeted anti-CD38 mAb treatments and whether therapy can be administered as a single unit or with CD38-GEAR-NK.
“The combination of CD38-GEAR-NK and CD38-Diagnostic has the potential to provide a more targeted administration of anti-CD38 mAbs in the treatment of cancers, including multiple myeloma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and acute myeloid leukemia,” Mehalick said in a statement.
“I would like to thank all those involved in achieving this milestone, including Bull Horn, Bridgeway Capital Partners, our existing and new investors, and the entire Coeptis team,” Mehalick added.
Coeptis is developing both platforms with VyGen-Bio and medical researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. The goal is to create natural killer cell-based therapeutics and diagnostics, initially focusing on cancers that over-express CD38+. The Karolinska Institutet is known worldwide for its Nobel Assembly, which awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to impact the advancement of technology and assets that will benefit cancer patients through this combination with Coeptis. Led by an exceptional management team, Coeptis is taking a novel approach to treating patients with cancer and expanding its development pipeline. We are excited by Coeptis’ plans for the technology, and view this opportunity as a significant value driver for our shareholders,” Calise noted in the same press release.
