NEW YORK – Elicio Therapeutics and Angion Biomedica plan to merge into a single company operating under the name Elicio Therapeutics, the biopharmaceutical companies said Tuesday.
Under the deal, Boston-based Elicio, a privately held company, will merge with a wholly owned subsidiary of Angion, a Uniondale, New York-based company that's developing novel small molecule therapeutics for fibrotic diseases, in an all-stock transaction. Angion went public last year, and the merged company will continue to trade on the Nasdaq.
The combined company will focus on developing immunotherapies with Elicio's Amphiphile technology, which targets vaccines to lymph nodes.
The new company will continue to develop ELI-002, a therapeutic cancer vaccine targeting mKRAS-mutated tumors, as its lead program. Elicio is already testing the ELI-002 immunotherapy in patients with cancers including pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and colorectal cancer in a Phase I/II clinical trial, dubbed AMPLIFY-201, and is planning an additional Phase Ib/II trial for the second half of 2023.
"The merger with Angion comes at an ideal time with ELI-002 now completing the dose escalation portion of Phase I clinical studies in patients," said Elicio CEO Robert Connelly in a statement. After the merger closes, Elicio's executive team will lead the combined company, with Connelly at the helm as CEO.
The new company's board of directors will comprise nine directors, including Connelly and Angion's current president and CEO, Jay Venkatesan. It will be headquartered in Boston.
Elicio and Angion expect the merger to close in the second quarter, pending stockholder approval. Under the terms of the deal, Elicio stockholders will receive newly issued shares of Angion common stock. Elicio stockholders are expected to own about 65.5 percent of the combined company, with Angion stockholders owning the remaining 34.5 percent.
Angion has also committed up to $10 million in a bridge loan to Elicio, subject to certain conditions and to be executed at the same time as the merger, according to the companies.