Corxel Pharmaceuticals, the obesity drugmaker founded by RTW Investments in 2019, agreed on October 26 to merge with Amanat Acquisition Corp, a Nasdaq listed special purpose acquisition company, in a transaction expected to generate about $377 million in gross proceeds. The money combines roughly $75 million held in Amanat’s trust account with an oversubscribed private investment in public equity of about $300 million from investors including RTW, New Enterprise Associates, SR One, RA Capital Management and TCGX. The combined company will take a new name and ticker before closing, expected in the first half of 2027, and Corxel will name a new United States based chief executive in the coming months.
The asset the money buys is CX11, a once daily oral small molecule GLP-1 receptor agonist licensed from China’s Vincentage Pharma. CX11 has completed Phase 3 testing in Asia, and in a United States Phase 2 trial reported in June it produced average weight loss of up to 11.5 percent at 36 weeks, with vomiting rates of 12 to 16 percent that the company describes as markedly lower than in mid stage tests of the Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly oral drugs. After an end of Phase 2 meeting, Corxel says it has aligned with the Food and Drug Administration on the Phase 3 design, and the proceeds are expected to fund operations through 2029, including the global Phase 3 obesity program. A second program, CX12, an oral amylin receptor agonist, is preclinical, with an investigational new drug filing targeted for the first half of 2027.
The structure splits the old company. The stroke drug JX10, licensed from Biogen, stays outside the listed vehicle in a private parent entity, so public investors get a pure obesity company. Corxel, formerly Ji Xing Pharmaceuticals, raised a $287 million Series D less than a year ago, and its chief financial officer Kevin Xie told BioPharma Dive that backers wanted a more dedicated focus rather than two development tracks.
Cross trial comparisons in oral GLP-1 are unreliable, and CX11’s Phase 3 has not started. What the deal establishes is financing: at a moment when the obesity pill market is forming around two approved products, a challenger has raised enough to run the large trials required to compete, provided Amanat shareholders do not redeem.