Corporadelic: MAPS For-Profit Arm Raises $100 Million

The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) has reversed course on its long-held commitment to retain full ownership of its pharmaceutical development arm. On Jan. 5, MAPS Public Benefit Corporation (MAPS PBC) announced that it had completed a Series A funding round of $100 million and changed its name to Lykos Therapeutics, a privately held firm. 

The decision to accept outside investment in MAPS PBC makes a mockery of a decade of fundraising messaging deployed by the MAPS nonprofit since the PBC’s founding in 2014.

Prior to the Jan. 5 announcement, MAPS PBC functioned as a drug development and manufacturing company wholly owned by the MAPS nonprofit entity. Its sole purpose was to push MDMA through clinical trials. Over the last decade, MAPS nonprofit leadership stated that money generated from the PBC would funnel back into the nonprofit and that the nonprofit would keep the PBC aligned with its mission to pursue patient well-being over profit. 

A description of MAPS PBC in the Autumn 2020 edition of the MAPS Bulletin described the mother nonprofit as “the only shareholder and therefore, MAPS PBC’s only goal is to pursue MAPS’ mission while maximizing public benefit.” The write-up stressed that MAPS’s “wholly public benefit model” was unique because it lacked the constraint of focusing on profits for investors. The article continued:

Within our wholly public benefit model, MAPS evaluates the needs of all our stakeholders — patients, researchers, therapists, donors, staff and policymakers — to create a platform for everyone to benefit, unlike companies prioritizing shareholders or the few who are putting up the capital. 

In June of 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that MAPS’ dire financial position had required a halt to all clinical trials in Europe, citing sources claiming that the organization only had enough cash on hand for two months of operation. According to the Journal, the pressure to turn over ownership to outside investors was a disappointment for MAPS founder Rick Doblin, who had hoped to rely on philanthropy and revenue sharing until MDMA sales started, and who “feared…becoming beholden to outside investors might compromise MAPS’s mission to make psychedelics accessible to as many patients as possible.”

The creation of Lykos Therapeutics has done exactly that. According to the Jan. 5 announcement, Lykos Therapeutics has accepted $100 million from outside investors including the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation, Eir Therapeutics, Vine Ventures, True Ventures, Elizabeth Koch’s Unlikely Collaborators Foundation, the Joe and Sandy Samberg Foundation, Bail Capital, KittyHawk Ventures and Satori Neuro. The MAPS nonprofit will no longer retain full control over Lykos Therapeutics’ mission and operations (though some nonprofit leadership currently remains on Lykos Therapeutics board). In a statement distributed on Jan. 5, Doblin described his new private-sector partners as “mission-aligned investors who understand our prioritization of public benefit and deeply care about humanitarian causes. Helena is the right partner to help position Lykos in its transition.” 

Doblin released an additional statement on Jan. 10 in which he called the decision to accept investment in Lykos Therapeutics a result of his failure “to inspire enough philanthropists to donate the ever-increasing millions of dollars required” to take MDMA to market. In that statement he also re-confirmed that the MAPS nonprofit would be giving up day-to-day control to Lykos’ management: “The decisions to be made at Lykos, even though it is a public benefit corporation, will, of necessity, include responsibilities to private stockholders. 

This transition likely heralds a larger shift in the fast-moving field of psychedelics research. Josh Hardman, the founder of industry monitor Psychedelic Alpha, summarizes the general attitude among psychedelic philanthropists and investors in 2024 as, “Why would I donate when I can invest?” 

After decades of playing both sides, the mask, in other words, has fallen. Individuals with expendable capital are now seeking control and profit wherever they can find it within the field of psychedelic research.