Ketamine therapy provider HOPE Therapeutics announced it plans to acquire five ketamine clinics and reach $100 million in annual revenue in less than a year.

HOPE Therapeutics, a subsidiary of NRx Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: NRXP), announced on Monday that it has secured $30 million in debt to finance the acquisitions. The company is apparently targeting five unspecified clinics in the Western U.S. 

“We are delighted to take the critical first steps towards developing a network of clinics that can provide the highest possible level of care and demonstrate best practices for mental health professionals around the world,” the company’s leadership said in a statement.

Jonathan Javitt and Matthew Duffy are co-CEOs of HOPE Therapeutics.

HOPE Therapeutics also plans to expand its operations to France and the United Kingdom.

Wilmington, Delaware-based NRx Pharmaceuticals, HOPE Therapeutics’s parent company, is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focusing on suicidal bipolar depression, chronic pain and PTSD. It plans to submit a New Drug Application for an IV ketamine treatment for suicidal depression.

In July, NRx Pharmaceuticals described HOPE Therapeutics’s consolidation of existing ketamine clinics as one path to financial recovery from a challenging first half of 2024 in a letter to shareholders.

HOPE Therapeutics’s recent funding is separate from the more than $60 million of potential investments that the company was previously offered if it listed on a public stock exchange.

Despite the financial failures of other ketamine therapy providers in recent years, HOPE Therapeutics estimates that, through continued M&A, its network of clinics will result in annualized revenues of $100 million by mid-2025.

Research has demonstrated ketamine therapy to be an effective alternative to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), considered the “gold standard” treatment for severe depression. But ketamine companies have repeatedly stumbled in recent years. 

Ketamine-assisted therapy provider Field Trip was sold for parts to mental health provider Stella and other organizations in June 2023 after Field Trip closed its operations in multiple markets.

Ketamine Wellness Centers, which once billed itself as the largest ketamine therapy provider in the U.S., shut down its operations in March 2023. Canadian company Delic Holdings acquired the provider for $10 million in 2021.

A virtual ketamine practice in South Carolina was ordered to stop prescribing controlled substances and close shop in May 2023.