TriSalus Life Sciences to Become Publicly Traded Company Following Merger With MedTech Acquisition Corporation

November 16, 2022—TriSalus Life Sciences, a privately held oncology therapeutics company integrating immunotherapy with delivery technology for the treatment of patients with liver and pancreatic tumors, announced it has entered into a definitive merger agreement with MedTech Acquisition Corporation (Nasdaq: MTAC), a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company.

According to TriSalus, MedTech is a blank check company formed for the purpose of effecting a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization, or similar business combination with one or more businesses or entities. MedTech has stated its focus is on the medical technology industry in the United States and other developed countries.

Upon the closing of the transaction, the combined company will be a publicly traded company; its common stock is expected to be listed on the Nasdaq as TLSI. The transaction represents a post-transaction market capitalization of approximately $244.4 million for TriSalus upon closing, stated the company.

The pending merger has been unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both TriSalus and MedTech and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2023, subject to the satisfaction of the necessary regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions, including the approval of MedTech’s shareholders.

The board of the combined company post-close would be comprised of nine members, of which seven are selected by TriSalus and two from MedTech. The leadership team will be the existing TriSalus team led by president and CEO Mary Szela.

According to TriSalus, the company’s platform addresses immune dysfunction in liver and pancreatic tumors by combining its drug delivery technology with immunotherapeutics.

The TriSalus platform includes the TriNav, an FDA-cleared TriNav infusion system that was launched in 2020. TriNav was designed to administer established and emerging therapeutics, including SD-101, the company’s investigational TLR9 agonist, to selected sites, including tumors in the liver with the ability to treat disease throughout the entire organ.

TriNav is the company’s latest asset for its Pressure-Enabled Drug Delivery (PEDD) method of administration that has been shown to overcome intratumoral pressure through modulation of pressure and flow to increase delivery of therapeutic agents and improve patient outcomes.

The company is developing SD-101, a class C toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9) agonist, that promotes T cell infiltration, reduction of myeloid-derived suppressor cells, and broad immune activation to reverse immunosuppression in the liver and pancreas.

TriSalus is investigating SD-101 as a therapeutic candidate delivered by PEDD to enable deeper and more durable responses to other immunotherapeutics (eg, checkpoint inhibitors) in a range of liver and pancreatic cancers for which limited therapeutic options currently exist. Thus far, across two clinical trials, > 100 infusions of SD-101 have been delivered at several dose levels as monotherapy and in combination with checkpoint inhibitors in > 20 patients with safety data indicating treatments were well-tolerated.

TriSalus advised that the transaction will support the company's initiatives. It is pursuing commercialization of additional technologies leveraging the PEDD approach, such as the pancreatic retrograde venous infusion system. The TriNav infusion system is already a commercial-stage, FDA-cleared drug-delivery device. The TriNav using the PEDD approach has been validated in peer-reviewed studies at multiple clinical sites and performed in > 17,000 cases to date, noted the company.

With its ability to optimize transcatheter arterial chemoembolization and transcatheter arterial radioembolization procedures, the platform has near-term expansion opportunities by partnering with companies advancing checkpoint inhibitors, chimeric antigen receptor T-cells therapies and other cell immunotherapies, stated TriSalus.