MapLight Therapeutics is hoping to raise up to $262 million from its IPO, with the proceeds earmarked for its challenger to Bristol Myers Squibb’s schizophrenia med Cobenfy.
The California-based biotech previously outlined plans for an anticipated Nasdaq listing, but only yesterday did the company attach some numbers to the plan. The idea is for MapLight to offer 14.7 million shares priced at $17 apiece, according to an Oct. 6 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
This should bring in net proceeds of $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.
Up to $120 million of the 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.
Another batch of up to $70 million of the IPO proceeds has also 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.
Though supported by Big Pharmas like Sanofi and Novo Nordisk parent company Novo Holdings, MapLight has readily burned through heaps of cash. The biotech’s deficit was $251.6 million as of June 30, per the latest SEC filing, with $60.5 million on hand.
Should the IPO go through, MapLight would become just the second biotech to go public since February, following in the footsteps of LB Pharmaceuticals’ approximately $285 million listing earlier this month.
While the IPO market has been largely stagnant for most of the year, it looks like schizophrenia biotechs are among the few willing to take the risk of going public. Besides MapLight, LB Pharmaceuticals also announced in September that it is hoping to raise up to $263 million from an IPO in order to finance its oral schizophrenia candidate.
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.