SAN JOSE — MAPS Public Benefit Corporation (“MAPS PBC”), a company dedicated to transforming mental healthcare, announced an oversubscribed Series A financing and is changing its name to Lykos Therapeutics. MAPS PBC raised more than $100 million including conversion of previously issued convertible notes.
The financing was led by Helena with participation from other investors, including: the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation (led by Alex Cohen), Eir Therapeutics, Vine Ventures, True Ventures, Unlikely Collaborators Foundation, The Joe and Sandy Samberg Foundation, Bail Capital, KittyHawk Ventures and Satori Neuro.
“We are incredibly grateful for Helena’s tremendous support and leadership as well as the contributions from other mission-aligned investors, which comes at this critical time as we are transitioning from a development-stage company to one focused on commercialization of the potential first psychedelic-assisted therapy,” said Amy Emerson, chief executive officer (“CEO”) of Lykos. “To reflect our company evolution, we selected a new name, Lykos which means wolf in Greek, to represent the qualities—bravery, courage, loyalty and intelligence—that resonate with our company.”
With the completion of the financing, there have been changes to the Lykos board of directors. The new eight-member board is comprised of six Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (“MAPS”) appointees, four of whom are independent directors, the CEO of Lykos, and Suprotik (Protik) Basu from Helena, who brings over two decades of public health financing experience to the board.
“We are inspired by the mission and work of Lykos and honored to be chosen as their trusted partner,” said Protik Basu, managing partner at Helena. “This strong funding round, combined with the Phase 3 results and recent new drug application submission to the FDA, position Lykos to continue its journey to help transform mental health, and to help address the large unmet need for the estimated 13 million Americans who suffer from PTSD1, should this investigational drug used in combination with therapy be approved by the FDA.”
