MapLight Therapeutics is heading to the Nasdaq this morning via a $250 million IPO the biotech will use to advance its challenger to Bristol Myers Squibb’s schizophrenia med Cobenfy.
The California-based company has stuck with its previously announced plans to offer 14.7 million shares at $17 apiece. This is expected to bring the biotech $227.3 million—rising to $262.3 million if underwriters take up their full option of buying an additional 2.21 million shares at the same price.
MapLight’s stock is due to list on the Nasdaq this morning under the ticker “MPLT,” the company confirmed in its Oct. 27 release. Alongside the IPO, MapLight will sell 476,707 shares of common stock at the same price in a private placement to affiliates of Goldman Sachs.
Up to $120 million of the IPO proceeds funds will be used to finance the ongoing phase 2 study of MapLight’s M1/M4 muscarinic agonist ML-007C-MA for schizophrenia. The 300-person trial kicked off in July.
The company has previously said that another batch of up to $70 million of the IPO proceeds has been earmarked for a phase 2 study of ML-007C-MA in Alzheimer’s disease psychosis, which launched last month.
Beyond that, up to $25 million is expected to fund an ongoing phase 2 study of MapLight’s 5-HT agonist ML-004 for autism spectrum disorder, with up to $40 million to be spent on preclinical studies of the GPR52 positive allosteric modulator ML-009 and the M4 antagonist ML-021.
This morning’s IPO will make MapLight the second biotech to go public since February, following in the footsteps of LB Pharmaceuticals’ approximately $285 million listing last month. Inflammation biotech Evommune has also floated the idea of a public listing in recent weeks.
After decades of no new options, the schizophrenia space was shaken up last year with the approval of Bristol Myers Squibb’s Cobenfy. Since then, rival candidates from other companies have continued to struggle in the clinic, including Boehringer Ingelheim’s iclepertin, AbbVie’s emraclidine and Atai Life Sciences’ inidascamine.
CNS-focused drugs have also been behind the biggest deals of the year to date—notably Johnson & Johnson’s $14.6 billion buyout of Intra-Cellular Therapies in January and Novartis’ $12 billion acquisition of Avidity Biosciences yesterday.