Pear Therapeutics, Inc.

Click Therapeutics cut more than a quarter of its workforce shortly after raising Series D funding, Endpoints News has learned. The digital therapeutics startup, which on Thursday raised $50 million from pharmaceutical giant Boehringer Ingelheim, let go of 25 employees out of a staff of 93, according to a person familiar with the matter. In a statement to Endpoints, Click confirmed the layoffs. “We are at a natural transition point. After years of successful R&D, we are now retooling Click to focus on the commercial launch of our validated therapies,” Click’s chief strategy officer Austin Speier said in a statement. “While we are incredibly excited about the potential of CT-155, that shift means making hard changes to our team to match our new commercial mission.” Boehringer’s $50 million investment funded Click’s CT-155 digital therapeutic. In a Phase 3 trial last year, CT-155 hit its primary endpoints of reducing negative symptoms of schizophrenia, such as the lack of motivation and inability to feel pleasure. Companies developing digital therapeutics, which aim to treat patients through apps on their phones, have been struggling to get paid for the treatments. Click, founded in 2012, is one of the most established companies still operating in the space. Pear Therapeutics, the first startup to get FDA clearance for a digital therapeutic, filed for bankruptcy in 2023. Akili Interactive, another high-profile company, went private two years after its IPO in 2022. But Click’s latest investment is only a small amount of what might have been between Boehringer and Click. In 2020, the pharma company promised over $500 million in milestone-based payments plus royalties to co-develop CT-155, in which Boehringer would commercialize the product while Click supported research and development. But under the new funding round, Boehringer is giving Click back full rights to market and commercialize CT-155, which is waiting for clearance from the FDA. “This is the best deal that we’ve ever done. The time is now for the space,” CEO David Klein told STAT last week in an interview about the funding round, commenting on the state of digital therapeutics. This isn’t the first round of layoffs at Click, Endpoints learned. In January, it cut an undisclosed number of employees after Boehringer ended its deal with Click to work on another digital therapeutic to treat schizophrenia called CT-156. The partnership was an extension of the one it struck for CT-155. A spokesperson for Boehringer confirmed that it’s no longer working on CT-156 and said Click has been a “valued partner.” Transferring the responsibility to commercialize CT-155 back to Click with last week’s funding round reflects Boehringer’s current priorities, they said. “We are pleased to have partnered in the development of such an innovative modality of therapy,” the spokesperson said of CT-155. “Click’s expertise in digital therapeutics, experience in the mental health space, and commitment to patient-centric approaches position the company well to bring this important therapy to patients.” (This story is from our Health Tech newsletter. If you’d like to sign up, just click here. )

Cerebral's acquisition of Inflow, for an undisclosed sum, could reignite interest in the prescription digital therapeutics market, which has remained relatively stagnant following the collapse or asset sales of prominent companies in the sector. Inflow has developed a behavioral health app for individuals with ADHD. The deal would allow Cerebral to offer ADHD patients ongoing support through therapy, skill-building modules, medication management, and community engagement. Pear Therapeutics crashes in the PDT market PDTs are software-based therapies that can deliver clinical benefits to patients, either alone or in combination with other forms of treatment, according to amcp.org . In the early 2020s, the space saw a boom. Boston, MA-based Pear Therapeutics, the poster child for PDTs during this era, went public through a special purpose acquisition corporation deal with Thimble Point in 2021.  The combined business had a combined equity value of $1.6 billion with an expected $400 million in gross proceeds. Pear developed reset, a PDT for use as an adjuvant to standard outpatient therapy to treat patients with substance use disorder for stimulants, cannabis, cocaine, and alcohol. It also developed reSET-O, which was used to help those with opioid use disorder stay in recovery programs. Pear’s Somryst PDT is for the treatment of chronic insomnia. By 2022, the company had already gone through two rounds of layoffs – one in July 2022 and another in November 2022. By April of 2023, Pear had filed for bankruptcy. Reimbursement challenges were cited as the reason for Pear failing. Better Therapeutics folds in the PDT market Better Therapeutics, another company that moved the PDT needle, suffered a similar fate. The company developed BT-001, a PDT for the treatment of type 2 diabetes in adults. You can hear Better Therapeutics Chairman and Co-founder David Perry discuss the company during this 2021 episode of Let’s Talk Medtech. In May of 2024, Click Therapeutics acquired Better Therapeutics assets . In the deal, Click obtained the AspyreRx (BT-001), the first FDA-authorized PDT for type 2 diabetes, and BT-004, which was recently granted FDA Breakthrough Device Designation for the treatment of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH). Other assets are BT-002, for the reduction of blood pressure in patients with hypertension, and BT-003, for the reduction of LDL cholesterol in patients with hyperlipidemia. Click also bid $70 million for some of Pear’s assets in 2023. PDTs resurface after crash While the PDT space has been relatively quiet, Cerebral’s acquisition of Inflow shows there is still life in the market. Sidekick Health kept the fires burning when it acquired Aidhere , a company that developed Zanadio, an app that provides a digital and multimodal weight reduction treatment for patients diagnosed with obesity.

Despite popular belief, special purpose acquisition corporation (SPAC) mergers continue to take place Freenome and Perceptive Capital Solutions Corp resurrected the trend that saw several medical device and diagnostic companies go public in the early part of the pandemic. Brisbane, CA-based Freenome is focused on early cancer detection and develops blood-based screening tests. In addition to approximately $90 million held in PCSC's trust account (assuming no redemptions by PCSC's public shareholders), the transaction includes commitments for a common equity PIPE at $10.00 per share of approximately $240 million from a group of premier healthcare investors. The PIPE is led by Perceptive and RA Capital with participation from ADAR1 Capital, Bain Capital Life Sciences, Farallon Capital Management, as well as other new and existing leading healthcare investors. "Freenome is entering the public markets at an inflection point for our company and for blood-based cancer screening," said Aaron Elliott, Phd, CEO of Freenome. "Our technology has been clinically validated through our pivotal PREEMPT CRC study and recent JAMA manuscript. We have secured the commercialization partnerships needed to support the expected launch of multiple tests in 2026. Perceptive Advisors and our other PIPE investors bring deep healthcare expertise and conviction in our approach to make multi-cancer detection personalized, accessible, and part of routine care." Proceeds from the merger will be used to: Accelerate the development of Freenome's AI/ML-driven multiomics platform that seeks to identify the early biological signals of disease Expand the company's commercial and data infrastructure to support the expected 2026 launch of multiple blood-based cancer detection tests, including colorectal cancer, lung, and other indications run through a common automated laboratory workflow Advance the company's personalized multi-cancer detection pipeline, with the goal of offering multiple tests to an individual based on their health profile, risk, and guideline eligibility SPAC trends SPAC mergers were a popular trend in the early part of the pandemic. However , by 2022, the cracks began to show in many of the SPAC deals as the companies either backed out of the option or eventually went bankrupt. Pear Therapeutics, a once vibrant company for the prescription digital therapeutics space and poster child for the SPAC era, filed for bankruptcy and eventually sold its assets.