Dr. James Topper serves as CEO Of FLAC. (Photo via Frazier)

One of Seattle’s biggest and longest active venture capital firms is looking to jump into the SPAC arena.

Frazier Healthcare Partners — which has invested in biotechnology companies since 1991 — filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $100 million for a special purpose acquisition corporation, also known as a SPAC.

Frazier’s SPAC is dubbed Frazier Lifescience Acquisition Corporation, or FLAC for short. Frazier describes the new entity as a “blank check company” with the goal of achieving “a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses or entities.”

The newly-created firm — led by key members of the Frazier investment team — has not yet selected a target. But it does plan to use its experience to find a company in the biotechnology arena, one that can can “both develop transformative therapies for patients in need and deliver significant returns to its investors.”

Frazier Lifescience Acquisition Corporation is led by four-person executive team of James Topper, David Topper, Gordon Empey and Max Nowicki, all four of whom hold top positions within Frazier. Its board includes Michael Bigham, the former CEO of Paratek Pharmaceutical; Robert Baltera,  the CEO of Cirius Pharmaceuticals and an Entrepreneur in Residence at Frazier; Carol G. Gallagher, a venture partner at New Enterprise Associates; and Krishna Polu, the Executive Vice President R&D of Equillium and a former Entrepreneur in Residence at Frazier who founded Expedition Therapeutics.

The firm declined to comment on the filing.

One notable aspect of the SEC filing: The newly-created entity may pursue a business combination with a company already connected to Frazier. If that occurs, the firm said it would seek an outside opinion from an investment banking or accounting firm indicating that “such initial business combination or transaction is fair to our company from a financial point of view.”

Frazier Healthcare is not alone in its pursuit of SPAC riches. As TechCrunch noted last month, a host of venture firms — from Ribbit Capital to Softbank to Lux Capital — have jumped on the SPAC bandwagon. Notable investors such as wireless pioneer Craig McCaw and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman also have formed SPACs recently. In the first 10 months of 2020, there were 165 SPACS listed — twice as many as in the full year of 2019, according to CNBC.

Frazier Healthcare announced a $617 million venture capital fund earlier this year, the firm’s 10th. Over the years, Frazier has bankrolled more than 100 companies, taking more than 60 to IPO or merger. Sine 2010, its portfolio companies have received FDA approval for 30 drugs.

With the formation of FLAC, the firm sees an opportunity to take advantage of surging M&A activity in the biotechnology space.

“The rapid and increasing pace of company formation and innovation in the Biopharma environment has yielded an attractive number of compelling investment opportunities,” the firm wrote in the SEC filing. “Driven by the strength of the private fundraising environment, we continue to see a profusion of high quality private companies that forms a large pool of prospective targets for FLAC.”

The newly-formed company plans to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol FLACU, with Credit Suisse serving as manager of the offering. More on the SPAC from the SEC filing here.

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