RA Capital-backed Oak Hill to go public in USD 175m SPAC deal

RA Capital-backed Oak Hill Bio will go public through a USD 175 million SPAC merger to fund Phase III development of rugonersen, a former Roche antisense therapy for Angelman syndrome. The rare disease company will become available on Nasdaq via a merger with Research Alliance Corporation III (Nasdaq: RACC), a SPAC sponsored by RA Capital Management, under the ticker "OAKH".

The transaction combines USD 75 million held in the Research Alliance Coporation's trust account — fully backstopped by RA Capital — with a USD 100 million committed private financing. Of that private financing, RA Capital funded USD 45 million at signing through a SAFE investment in Oak Hill Bio, with the remainder to be funded at closing via an oversubscribed PIPE priced at USD 10.00 per share. The deal follows a USD 32.5 million Series A that Oak Hill previously closed, and the company said the combined proceeds are expected to fund development through Phase III readout and a potential NDA submission in the second half of 2029.

Oak Hill Bio's sole disclosed program is rugonersen (OHB-724), an antisense oligonucleotide originally developed by Roche and licensed to Oak Hill in February 2025. The therapy is designed to bind and degrade the UBE3A-ATS transcript in the central nervous system, a long non-coding antisense RNA that epigenetically silences the paternal UBE3A allele in neurons. By triggering degradation of that transcript, rugonersen aims to restore neuronal UBE3A expression and address the underlying biology of Angelman syndrome. The company dosed the first patient in the pivotal Phase III BEACON trial (NCT07605429) in July 2026.

Angelman syndrome affects approximately 30,000 diagnosed patients across the US and the EU5 and has no approved disease-modifying therapies. Several other ASO programs targeting UBE3A-ATS have been in development, including efforts previously advanced at larger pharmaceutical companies, making rugonersen's Phase III entry notable in a field where pivotal data remain absent.

PIPE participants include Series A investors Balyasny Asset Management, Janus Henderson Investors, KCap Biotechnology Fund, and venBio, alongside new investors including BVF Partners, Logos Capital, Ally Bridge Group, and Great Point Partners. Oak Hill Bio CEO Josh Distler will lead the combined company. Mike MacLean, a current RACC director and former CFO of Avidity Biosciences, will remain on the board post-closing. The business combination is expected to close by year-end 2026, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals.

---

Access the AllSci platform to explore the science behind the news.

---

Spot something wrong? Report an issue with this article