In the eye of the storm: A virtual reverse merger

In his famous Mansion House speech, post Alamein, Churchill noted that the second world war had “perhaps, reached the end of the beginning”. Our journey to being a mature biotech, developing our own medicines for patients with cancer, has perhaps arrived at this point for F-star.

Earlier this year, we announced our plan to combine with Spring Bank Pharmaceuticals and through this combination achieve a NASDAQ listing. Access to this investment capital market will in turn enable us to pursue our mission of creating next generation immunotherapies. I am thrilled to share that this combination successfully closed on Friday. 

We have often been asked why we elected to go the route of a business combination/reverse merger rather than a more traditional IPO. During 2019, we had started preparing for an IPO, but given the stage of our pipeline, an internal reorganization, impending US elections – and then with a pandemic on top of that – we decided to focus our efforts on pipeline progression and put off an IPO until 2021. 

In the Spring of this year, however, we were approached about a potential combination with Spring Bank Pharmaceuticals. The timing was opportunistically right for us as this would allow F-star to potentially be listed on Nasdaq this year, so we decided to move forward. All straight-forward enough, except of course there was, and is, Covid-19! 

If you would have told me in January that we’d merge with a company of people, none of whom I’d ever met, I wouldn’t have believed you. We’ve never met the Spring Bank team in person, never been in the same room together, never shared a meal and drink, but we’re all having to find new ways to work in this pandemic environment. Look what can be done! 

Beyond the obvious financial implications of the merger, this positions us to have an incredible impact on the way cancer is treated for patients that don’t have other options right now. In 1942, the people assembled at the Mansion House dinner did not know what lay ahead for them, but they knew the first step had been successfully taken. In our war against cancer, our mission is to bring our resources together to make this terrible disease more manageable, giving patients a better quality of life, for longer.