SPAC Ashington Innovation plans to acquire dormant UK-based Celixir for $172M

London-based SPAC Ashington Innovation is planning to acquire dormant, UK-based biotech Celixir for $172 million (£135 million) in an all-share transaction, taking over its lead program for a heart failure drug.

In order to pay for Celixir, Ashington said it will place new ordinary shares to raise up to £3 million to finance drug development and working capital.

Jason Smart

Jason Smart, the founder of Ashington Innovation, said in a statement that “the proposed acquisition meets our stated objective of identifying a potentially extremely valuable entity capable of sustainable development and with significant technological advantages.”

While Celixir does not have any approved drugs, it does have patents in the US, UK, EU and Asia, and it also completed a human clinical trial in heart failure, albeit at an early stage.

Celixir, previously known as Cell Therapy Ltd, last made an announcement in 2018 when it said that the FDA had accepted an IND for its immune-modulatory progenitor cell therapy for the treatment of adult heart failure called Heartcel. Earlier that same year, the company said the UK had also given the go-ahead for a Phase IIb Heartcel trial, which the company planned to recruit up to 250 patients in the US and UK.

Although the Phase IIb’s ClinicalTrials.gov listing shows the trial did not yet start to recruit patients, the company says Heartcel was successful in an earlier study and showed a reversal of heart muscle scarring when the cells were injected into heart muscle during coronary artery bypass graft surgery. But that completed trial was small and had no control group, according to the company.

In 2016, Celixir had entered into an agreement with Daiichi Sankyo, allowing the company to develop and commercialize Heartcel in Japan while Celixir kept manufacturing responsibilities for clinical trials and commercialization. The agreement is listed on Daiichi’s website, though the drug is still listed as in development.

Two other candidates are listed on Celixir’s website, including Tendoncel, a platelet-based therapy made as a topical gel to regenerate injured tendons near the surface of the skin. The drug was in Phase II trials in Europe.

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