MapLight Therapeutics

MapLight Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on improving the lives of patients suffering from debilitating central nervous system (CNS) disorders. The company was founded by globally recognized leaders in psychiatry and neuroscience research to address the lack of circuit-specific pharmacotherapies available for patients.

MapLight Therapeutics’ discovery platform aims to fill this critical gap by identifying neural circuits causally linked to disease and targeting those circuits for therapeutic modulation. The company’s deep understanding of the causal relationships between the modulation of defined neural circuits and resulting changes in disease-specific behaviors is expected to enable the development of therapeutics that deliver meaningful advantages in efficacy, safety, tolerability, and ease of use for patients and prescribers.

MapLight Therapeutics’ lead product candidate, ML-007C-MA, is a fixed-dose combination of an M1/M4 muscarinic agonist, ML-007, co-formulated with a peripherally acting anticholinergic (PAC). The company is initially developing ML-007C-MA for the treatment of schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease psychosis (ADP). ML-007C-MA is designed to activate both M1 and M4 muscarinic receptors in the CNS to drive efficacy, while synchronizing the pharmacokinetics of the agonist and antagonist components to mitigate peripheral cholinergic side effects.

ML-007, whether administered alone, co-administered, or co-formulated with PAC, has been evaluated in four Phase 1 clinical trials involving a total of 270 healthy participants and more than 1,500 administered doses. Based on clinical and preclinical data, MapLight Therapeutics believes that ML-007C-MA has demonstrated the potential to be a well-tolerated and effective treatment option for patients with CNS disorders.