Tampa, Florida-based Psilera, Inc. has closed an oversubscribed USD 8.8 million Series Seed extension round to advance its lead asset, PSIL-006, toward first-in-human trials targeted for 2027. The Psilera funding round was led by a syndicate of institutional and strategic investors; no individual participants were named in the announcement.
The company said proceeds will support IND-enabling studies for PSIL-006 and fund the broader transition from a discovery-stage to a clinical-stage organization. Psilera previously raised a USD 2.5 million Series Seed in July 2021, led by What If Ventures and Iter Investments, and secured a non-dilutive NIH grant of up to USD 2 million in October 2025 to fund IND-enabling studies of PSIL-006 in alcohol use disorder. Combined with the current round, total capital mobilized across equity and grant sources stands at approximately USD 13.3 million.
The company also executed a strategic licensing agreement with Atai Life Sciences — now operating as AtaiBeckley — covering Psilera’s DMT patent portfolio, in February 2025. Financial terms were not disclosed, though the deal included an upfront payment, development milestones, and royalties on future commercial sales.
The science behind neuroplastogens
PSIL-006 is described by the company as a first-in-class dual agonist of the serotonin 5-HT2A and 5-HT6 receptors, designed to promote neuroplasticity while reducing the hallucinogenic and cardiovascular liabilities associated with classical psychedelics. The lead indication is behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia, a progressive neurodegenerative condition with no approved disease-modifying therapies; alcohol use disorder is a secondary indication supported by the NIH grant.
The underlying scientific premise is that neuroplasticity deficits — reduced synaptic density and impaired dendritic remodeling — are a shared pathological feature across several neurological and psychiatric conditions, and that selective pharmacological restoration of plasticity represents a viable therapeutic strategy. Classical psychedelics such as psilocybin and DMT have demonstrated rapid, robust neuroplastogenic effects in preclinical and clinical settings, mediated in part through 5-HT2A receptor agonism and upregulation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Psilera’s approach attempts to retain this mechanism while engineering out the hallucinogenic signal through biased and partial agonism, and by co-targeting the 5-HT6 receptor, which is expressed in brain regions associated with cognition and neurodegeneration.
The company’s drug discovery engine, internally designated the Psilera Third Eye platform, uses AI-assisted computational chemistry and molecular docking to design and screen psychedelic-derived scaffolds against serotonin receptor targets. Candidates are validated through translational behavioral assays, including head-twitch response models as a proxy for hallucinogenicity and novel object recognition for cognitive outcomes. In June 2025, Psilera entered a research collaboration with Hesperos, Inc., an Orlando-based organ-on-a-chip technology company, to generate human-relevant preclinical data for PSIL-006 in frontotemporal dementia ahead of IND submission.
Psilera was co-founded in 2019 by Chris Witowski, who serves as CEO, and Jackie von Salm, who serves as Chief Science Officer. Both completed doctoral degrees in natural products chemistry at the University of South Florida, where their research focused on bioactive metabolite isolation from marine organisms and structure-activity relationship analysis of natural product scaffolds. The company is headquartered at the USF Research Park in Tampa, and the USF Research Foundation has formally invested in the company’s frontotemporal dementia research program.
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