Prescription software firm Pear Therapeutics to go public via $1.6 billion SPAC deal, harnessing 3 FDA-authorized products and 14 candidates

Pear Ther­a­peu­tics to Go Pub­lic in Rough­ly $1.6 Bil­lion SPAC Deal (The Wall Street Journal):

Med­ical tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Pear Ther­a­peu­tics Inc. has agreed to go pub­lic by merg­ing with a blank-check com­pa­ny with ties to the Pritzk­er Vlock Fam­i­ly Office, bet­ting on the grow­ing role of pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal therapeutics.

The pro­posed merg­er would give the com­bined com­pa­ny a pro for­ma equi­ty val­ue of about $1.6 billion.

Boston-based Pear Ther­a­peu­tics is merg­ing with Thim­ble Point Acqui­si­tion Corp. in a deal that’s expect­ed to close in the sec­ond half of the year, sub­ject to Thim­ble Point share­hold­er approval. Investors that include the Pritzk­er Vlock Fam­i­ly Office and Neu­berg­er Berman Group funds are back­ing a rough­ly $125 mil­lion pri­vate invest­ment in pub­lic equi­ty, or PIPE, as part of the pro­posed deal. Pear Ther­a­peu­tics’ cur­rent man­age­ment team will lead the com­bined com­pa­ny, which will be called Pear Hold­ings Corp. The com­pa­ny would seek to trade under the tick­er PEAR.

Pear Ther­a­peu­tics … is one of the lead­ers in pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics, or PDTs. A pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic is a pre­scrip­tion soft­ware that deliv­ers ther­a­peu­tic inter­ven­tion to pre­vent, man­age or treat a med­ical dis­or­der or disease.

PDTs are designed and test­ed much like tra­di­tion­al pre­scrip­tion drugs but rely on soft­ware approved by health reg­u­la­tors to treat patients. PDTs are seen as improv­ing patient reten­tion and, there­fore, sav­ing future health­care costs.

The com­pa­ny, which isn’t yet prof­itable, has three prod­ucts approved by the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion, two of which have received approval to include claims on their labels for treat­ment reten­tion, Chief Exec­u­tive Corey McCann said.

The Announcement:

Pear Ther­a­peu­tics to Become a Pub­lic Com­pa­ny and Expand its Lead­er­ship Posi­tion in Pre­scrip­tion Dig­i­tal Ther­a­peu­tics (press release):

“At Pear, we set out to trans­form health­care through the use of PDTs, a new class of clin­i­cal­ly val­i­dat­ed, soft­ware-based ther­a­peu­tics that we pio­neered to improve patients’ out­comes across many ther­a­peu­tic areas, alone and in com­bi­na­tion with phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. With our end-to-end PDT plat­form, we are exe­cut­ing on our vision to rede­fine how patients, clin­i­cians and pay­ors can bet­ter nav­i­gate and ben­e­fit from a health­care sys­tem so in need of dis­rup­tion,” said Corey McCann, M.D., Ph.D., Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer … “We chose to invest in Pear because we believe it has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to become the pri­ma­ry com­mer­cial plat­form through which patients and pre­scribers access PDTs.” (said Elon Boms, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer and Chair­man of Thim­ble Point Acqui­si­tion Corp)

Pear is one of nine com­pa­nies invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Pre­cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Pilot Pro­gram. Pear has devel­oped and com­mer­cial­ized the first three FDA-autho­rized PDTs, has 14 prod­uct can­di­dates, and is scal­ing its plat­form for third-par­ty prod­uct dis­tri­b­u­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties. The Company’s three FDA-autho­rized prod­ucts, reSET®, reSET‑O® and Som­ryst®, address large mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties with more than 20 mil­lion patients suf­fer­ing from sub­stance and opi­oid use dis­or­ders and more than 30 mil­lion from chron­ic insom­nia, in the U.S. alone, respectively.

News in Context:

• Pear Ther­a­peu­tics expands plat­form via part­ner­ships with Empat­i­ca, etec­tRx, Key­Wise, and Winterlight
• Pear Ther­a­peu­tics rais­es $80M; finds cost sav­ings of $2,150 per patient with opi­oid use disorder
• The FDA clears Som­ryst, Pear’s dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic to treat chron­ic insomnia