Dive Brief:

• Corxel Pharmaceuticals, a drug startup developing a pair of weight loss medicines, announced Monday plans to go public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company.
• The SPAC deal and concurrent $300 million private investment will help Corxel take CX11, a GLP-1 pill licensed from the Chinese drug developer Vincentage Pharma, into late-stage testing. In June, Corxel said CX11 helped participants in a U.S. Phase 2 trial lose an average of up to 11.5% of their body weight after 36 weeks while displaying a “favorable” gastrointestinal tolerability profile.
• The combined company will also advance a preclinical weight loss prospect directed at a different gut hormone known as amylin. A third drug licensed from Biogen and in development for acute ischemic stroke isn't part of the deal and will instead be housed in a parent entity. Corxel will name a new U.S.-based CEO in the coming months, according to the announcement.

Dive Insight:

The combination with the SPAC vehicle “Amanat Acquisition Corp.” comes less than a year after the biotech raised a $287 million Series D round. Corxel's backers made clear in subsequent talks that they wanted the company to have a "more dedicated focus," rather than pursue "two different tracks," said Kevin Xie, its chief financial officer, in an interview with BioPharma Dive.

What followed was a split, with two obesity drugs being merged into a publicly traded entity and the rest of Corxel funneled into a still-private parent.

“Both companies have separate development strategies and financing processes, so that’s more welcome news to the investors,” Xie said.

Formerly known as Ji Xing Pharmaceuticals, Corxel launched in 2019 and once planned to develop a nasal spray for dry eye disease. It offloaded that therapy in 2024, the same year it acquired from Biogen most rights to JX10 and licensed CX11 from Vincentage.

CX11 was already in human testing when Corxel struck that deal. Now it’s on the verge of a global late-stage study. Corxel reported positive late-stage data in May from a Chinese trial run by Vincentage. An international Phase 3 test could follow as soon as the first quarter of 2027.

Corxel is pitching CX11 as a “differentiated, next-generation” therapy and an option for people who don’t stay on injectable GLP-1s. Though it is well behind first-to-market oral GLP-1s like Eli Lilly’s Foundayo and Novo’s Wegovy pill, Xie said CX11 may be appealing to people who need to lose 5% to 10% of their body weight and are classified as overweight, but not obese. (Around 31% of U.S. adults fit this description, according to one National Institutes of Health estimate.)

Corxel is testing higher doses of CX11 in a Phase 1b trial in an effort to explore the drug’s “efficacy upside,” according to a statement. Additional data are expected in the first half of 2027.

The drug has “demonstrated a really competitive profile,” Xie said.