NEW YORK – Tango Therapeutics on Wednesday said it will merge with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) BCTG Acquisition and be listed as a public company on the Nasdaq.
The merger is expected to bring in approximately $167 million from BCTG's trust account funding and $186 million from other healthcare investors that have committed to purchase Tango's common stock at $10 per share. Current Tango shareholders are converting all their existing equity interest into common stock of the combined company. At closing, slated for Q3 of 2021 upon BCTG shareholder approval, the combined company is expected to receive $353 million in gross proceeds.
In addition to lead investor and BCTG sponsor Boxer Capital, other investors include Avoro Capital Advisors, Bain Capital Life Sciences, Blackrock, EcoR1 Capital, Farallon Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Foresite Capital, Janus Henderson Investors, Logos Capital, RA Capital Management, Samsara BioCapital, Southpoint Capital, Surveyor Capital, and Woodline Partners. Tango's existing shareholders Casdin Capital, Cormorant Asset Management, and Gilead Sciences will also participate.
Once the merger is completed later this year, Tango will be listed on the Nasdaq under the symbol "TNGX." The company will be led by Barbara Weber, current president and CEO of Tango.
The gross proceeds will help Tango advance several precision oncology therapeutic candidates in its pipeline. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based firm's lead drug candidate is TNG908, an MTA-cooperative PRMT5 inhibitor. Tango expects to file an investigational new drug application with the US Food and Drug Administration in Q4 2021 for TNG908 in cancer types that have an MTAP deletion. In 2022, Tango also expects to file an IND for its USP1 inhibitor for the treatment of BRCA1-mutant breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer, as well as an IND for an undisclosed target in 2023 for STK11-mutant lung cancer.
"We were particularly interested in partnering BCTG with a company with a novel approach to treating cancer, a deep pipeline and an exceptional management team, and Tango perfectly embodies the platform and company we had in mind with its focus on synthetic lethality," CEO of Boxer Capital and BCTG Aaron Davis said in a statement. "Tango's lead program, targeting PRMT5, leverages a unique mechanism of action with the potential to address a significant patient population across multiple cancer types, and we are excited about this transaction and supporting Tango on their path into the clinic and beyond."
Last year, Gilead invested $145 million in Tango to use its CRISPR-enabled functional genomics target discovery platform to identify up to 15 new immune evasion targets. Gilead has the option to exercise worldwide rights to programs directed at targets identified by Tango's platform through 2027. In 2018, Gilead paid $50 million for a similar collaboration with Tango to identify up to five targets.
BCTG is a SPAC, a type of company that has no commercial operations but is formed strictly to raise capital through an initial public offering for the purpose of acquiring an existing company. Goldman Sachs and SVB Leerink acted as financial advisors and private placement agents for BCTG; Guggenheim Securities was also a private placement agent for the SPAC.
Barclays acted as capital market and financial advisor to Tango, while Wedbush PacGrow also acted as an advisor to Tango. Since its launch in 2017, Tango has raised more than $160 million in equity funding.