Public Company Edition: Mergers with special purpose acquisition corporations may be heating up, but in addition to the Surrozen and Tango SPAC deals Recursion and Biomea launched initial public offerings. Also, Organon sells $5.6bn worth of notes to fund spinout from Merck & Co.

The cancer drug developer was planning to go public later this year, but its series B investor Boxer Capital proposed a merger with its special purpose acquisition corporation, BCTG Acquisition.

The company’s first candidate is a BCMA-targeting CAR-T, but Arcellx also is developing ARC T-cells controlled by a synthetic protein. Both have a binding domain that may confer better safety and efficacy than competitors.

iTeos presents early anti-TIGIT results, Affimed reports 100% response rate in Hodgkin lymphoma, Treovir will start a pivotal Phase II after Phase I pediatric glioma study, updates in KRAS-mutated cancers from Revolution Medicines and Cardiff Oncology, plus Opdivo plus chemo shows complete responses in neoadjuvant lung cancer and Lilly’s Retevmo is active in additional tumors.

Pfizer is looking to address breast cancer resistant to Ibrance and other CDK4/6 inhibitors, but sees potential paths to earlier lines of treatment and additional tumors.

EcoR1 and Casdin/Corvex took their second and third special purpose acquisition corporations public. Also, Ionis sold notes to buy back older notes and fund operations as it cut 70% of Akcea’s staff. In venture capital, ValenzaBio raised $70m and RA boosted Metagenomi’s series A to $75m.