SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 30, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- MapLight Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company working to develop targeted, novel therapeutics to improve the lives of people with brain disorders, today announced the closing of an oversubscribed $225 million Series C financing to continue the advancement of MapLight's transformative treatments for neuropsychiatric and neurological conditions.
"MapLight has built a diverse pipeline of innovative neuroscience therapeutics targeting a spectrum of Central Nervous System (CNS) disorders where the challenges faced by patients and families are significant and the unmet need is high. This financing will fuel the important clinical development necessary to bring these innovative therapies to patients," said Christopher Kroeger, M.D., MBA, Chief Executive Officer, and Founder. "The enthusiasm and continued support of our existing investors, combined with the significant commitment from this new slate of top tier funds, provides validation for our circuit-based discovery platform approach, the quality of our clinical assets, and the strong capabilities of our team."
"MapLight is advancing what we believe will be the best-in-class muscarinic agent for difficult-to-treat disorders including schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease psychosis. Schizophrenia alone affects around 3 million adults in the U.S. and 1 percent of the worldwide population," said Jim Trenkle, Ph.D., MBA, Partner in the Venture Investments group at Novo Holdings. "We are delighted to partner with a very strong group of existing and new investors to catalyze significant advancements in the fight against these important central nervous system disorders, and to support the talented, dedicated team at MapLight."
ML-007C-MA is a combination muscarinic agent in clinical development for the treatment of neurologic and neuropsychiatric conditions. ML-007C-MA unlocks the full therapeutic potential of ML-007, an M1/ M4-preferring muscarinic agonist, by pairing it with a precision-matched muscarinic antagonist to block peripheral side effects. ML-007C-MA was specifically designed with the goal of delivering powerful muscarinic agonist activity to the brain while preventing side effects outside of the brain with a muscarinic antagonist.
Schizophrenia is a serious, debilitating mental illness characterized by disturbances in perception, thinking, emotional reaction, and behavior. Schizophrenia can cause people to interpret reality abnormally and includes a combination of positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms. Approximately 60% of people with schizophrenia have no response or only a partial response to the available standard of care treatments, leaving a substantial portion of the population with urgent unmet needs.
Over 40% of people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) will experience delusions and hallucinations as part of the disease, a condition known as AD psychosis. The condition is often recurrent, severe, and is associated with an increased likelihood of nursing home placement and increased morbidity and mortality. There is no FDA approved medication for the treatment of AD psychosis.
MapLight is working to develop targeted, novel therapeutics to improve the lives of people with difficult-to-treat brain disorders. MapLight's unique discovery platform combines novel, proprietary technologies to uncover the individual circuits that misfire in brain disorders and target those circuits with effective, safe therapeutics. MapLight was founded in 2019 by a team of renowned neuroscientists who led the discovery of such groundbreaking technologies as optogenetics and STARmap. Learn more at www.maplightrx.com.
Novo Holdings is a holding and investment company that is responsible for managing the assets and the wealth of the Novo Nordisk Foundation. The purpose of Novo Holdings is to improve people's health and the sustainability of society and the planet by generating attractive long-term returns on the assets of the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
Wholly owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Novo Holdings is the controlling shareholder of Novo Nordisk A/S and Novozymes A/S and manages an investment portfolio with a long-term return perspective. In addition to managing a broad portfolio of equities, bonds, real estate, infrastructure and private equity assets, Novo Holdings is a world-leading life sciences investor. Through its Seeds, Venture, Growth, and Principal Investments teams, Novo Holdings invests in life science companies at all stages of development. As of year-end 2022, Novo Holdings had total assets of EUR 108 billion.
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