MapLight Therapeutics is the latest biotech to want a turn with Alphabet’s AI spinout SandboxAQ. The neuro-focused company is penning a strategic collaboration meant to develop new therapies for central nervous system diseases.
Under the terms of the deal, MapLight is beaming an undisclosed upfront payment over to SandboxAQ, with the tech outfit also eligible to receive preclinical, development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments worth up to $200 million "in aggregate," the partners announced in a Dec. 16 release.
The focus of the team-up is to find and develop drugs targeting a novel G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR), according to the release. The companies will conduct all preclinical research together, with MapLight then taking over for any clinical development and commercialization that follows.
“We are excited to advance research efforts for this novel target that was discovered and validated using our discovery platform,” James Lillie, Ph.D., MapLight’s chief scientific officer, said in the release. “We look forward to collaborating with SandboxAQ to leverage their AI platform to discover and advance novel therapies that have the potential to address significant unmet patient needs across a spectrum of CNS conditions.”
“Our AQBioSim platform allows us to simulate and predict molecular interactions with GPCRs with a level of precision that simply wasn’t possible before,” Andrea Bortolato, Ph.D., SandboxAQ’s vice president of drug discovery, said in the release.
SandboxAQ signed a similar pact with Florida-based iOncologi in July, with the goal of building a new mRNA vaccine for glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer. The Alphabet spinoff raised more than $300 million for its AI tech in December 2024.
While tinkering on new CNS compounds with SandboxAQ, MapLight will also be pushing ahead with ML-007C-MA, an M1/M4 muscarinic agonist the Bay Area biotech hopes can challenge BMS’ schizophrenia med Cobenfy. MapLight debuted on the Nasdaq in October with a $250 million initial public offering to raise funds for an ongoing phase 2 trial in the indication.
MapLight is also testing ML-007C-MA in a phase 2 Alzheimer’s disease psychosis trial. The biotech’s pipeline is rounded out by a phase 2 autism spectrum disorder candidate and a pair of preclinical programs for Parkinson’s disease and hyperactivity.