When the deal is completed, Panacea will be renamed Nuvation Bio, and the merged company's stock will trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol NUVB.

In addition to the $144 million held by Panacea, investors have committed to equity financing totaling just over $500 million at $10 per share. The combined company is expected to have cash resources of over $850 million at the closing of the transaction in the first quarter of 2021. The company will continue to operate under the Nuvation Bio executive team.

Nuvation will use the profits from the business combination to advance its portfolio of oncology candidates to clinical trials. The portfolio consists of six oncology therapeutic candidates: a cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) inhibitor program, a bromodomain and extra-terminal (BET) inhibitor program, a WEE1 inhibitor program, an adenosine A2A receptor inhibitor program, and a drug-drug conjugate platform that to date has yielded investigational compounds targeting hormone-driven cancers, such as prostate, breast, and ovarian cancers.

The company plans to initiate enrollment in a phase I/II study of its lead investigational compound, NUV-422, a CDK2/4/6 inhibitor, in patients with high-grade gliomas, including glioblastoma multiforme, by the first quarter of 2021. The company plans to submit five additional investigational new drug applications by 2026.

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