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Daily Archives: March 8, 2022
Fireside Project manifests a $200K fund to improve access to careers in psychedelic health – TechCrunch
Posted: March 8, 2022 at 11:07 pm
Lets get three truths out of the way. 1. Drugs are a sensitive topic. 2. In a lot of the world, many drugs that can be used recreationally including psychedelics are illegal. 3. A lot of people are willing to break the law to use psychedelic substances, whether recreationally, as part of spiritual practice or as a tool to explore and work on mental health issues.
Given the legal status of these substances, people are hesitant to call 911 if they are experiencing a crisis, many dont have access to peer groups that can offer support and theres not a lot of other support available either. Fireside Project is a notable exception the organization runs a hotline you can call when you need a bit of support when the walls are melting and it feels like your ego is sitting on a mushroom next to your body, arguing with the nearest lamp post.
In the process of launching the hotline, Fireside is placing itself in a really interesting position. Mental health is getting a lot of attention right now, and a lot of things are shifting in the world of drug decriminalization.The FDA approved ketamine as a treatment for medicine-resistant depression back in 2019, and startups like Mindbloom have popped up to fill that gap in the market. MDMA (ecstasy) is hella illegal, (its a Schedule 1 drug in the U.S., which means drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. This includes heroin and LSD, but also curiously cannabis, which today is legal for medical use in 37 states, and recreationally in 18 states in the U.S.), but research shows that MDMA can have incredible results for people with severe PTSD. Magic mushrooms are decriminalized in my hometown of Oakland, California, and a bunch of other cities and states are considering legalizing various psychedelics, including LSD, mushrooms, peyote, ayahuasca and many others.
Something interesting happens when a powerful psychedelic becomes legal somewhere; a bill is working its way through the California legislature now that might make psychoactive substances such as psilocybin mushrooms, LSD, ketamine, MDMA and ibogaine legal for people 21 and older. Should that happen, the roughly 23 million or so 21-and-over adults in California will legally be able to embrace their inner hippie. It bears pointing out that a tab of acid is a different experience than having a beer or two, and it stands to reason that people might need a bit of support from time to time. In a nutshell, thats what Fireside is tooling up to help support instead of dialing 911 because you feel like the trees are breathing along with you and its a little scary to face your deepest demons head-on, talking to a trained volunteer might be a better option.
To me, my psychedelic work is really a continuation of the healing work and the growth work that youre doing in other parts of your life. For my own personal experience, my own relationship to anxiety has been a lifelong struggle. The psychedelic work is not separate from that work. Its not separate from doing the deep dive into your own psyche and understanding your inner landscape and understanding the different parts of your being and your spirit. I think for me, psychedelics help to accelerate that process, explains Joshua White, founder and executive director of Fireside. But psychedelic work doesnt exist outside of this work of getting to know yourself, discovering and falling in love with the different parts of yourself. That work has innumerable parts; it could be psychotherapy, it could be walking in the forest and journaling, it could be conversations with friends theyre all interrelated. The psychedelic work is part of and it can be foundational to ones inner work and other parts of ones life.
Since its launch in April 2021, Fireside Project has fielded nearly 2,000 calls, and trained around 100 volunteers in the ability to field calls from the public. The org also developed an app to help keep people tethered to planet earth, and to help people who need some assistance with a trip they are currently on, or integrating a recent journey.
The two founders have an interesting background and context for how they ended up dedicating their lives to psychedelic medicine.
I spent the first chapter in my professional life as a practicing lawyer working for the San Francisco city attorneys office, mostly doing public interest impact litigation cases. It really got me thinking about the relationship between resources and impact, says White. How can we have the biggest possible impact using the smallest amount of resources? I started having my own psychedelic experiences many years ago, the first one was in 2002 I think. But psychedelics became a bigger part of my life around 2010. And for me, they were incredibly healing, helping me change my relationship to my anxiety, and really just develop a more loving relationship with each part of myself. I think it was due to my own experiences that I was deciding whether I wanted to leave my career as a lawyer to become a therapist with the hope of eventually working as a psychedelic therapist with MAPS. To explore that career transition, I figured I should try to get a couple of volunteer opportunities to see if I actually liked providing emotional support to other people. I volunteered at the Zendo Project at a few festivals. I fell in love with support lines, and really thought that support lines are a radically underappreciated, but foundational part of a community mental health ecosystem. Fast-forward many years to the start of the pandemic, I was sitting around in my apartment in San Francisco, as so many of us were forlorn about the direction the world was going. Everything from the pandemic, to the epidemic of disconnection and loneliness, to really the country, waking up to the ways that systemic oppression and injustice have been really afflicting our society from the very beginning. And so I thought, well, what can I do in this moment to try to help change the direction of the way things were going. I really believed as I still do that psychedelics have amazing healing potential for the world.
White found his co-founder for the Fireside Project in Hanifa Nayo Washington.
I am a cultural activist, musician and artist. I am also someone whos had 20 years of working in the nonprofit sector leading nonprofits and community organizing. What I bring to the world is around really wanting to create spaces of healing and wellness and connection. Ive been centered around that practice. I want to live in a world where everybody is living to their full potential, you know, where everybody is inspired and supported, and has all of their basic needs met, a world where everybody can show up at the table, bringing their full gifts, says Hanifa Nayo Washington, co-founder and chief of strategy at Fireside Project. What is in the way of us doing that right now? That was, for me, a question that I brought into some of my earliest psychedelic experiences for my particular type of healing path and journey. To me, life is a healing journey. Some of the earliest downloads or visions that I received, particularly after my first ayahuasca experiences, was about starting with you first. And when you do that all else will fall into place. And so that has really stuck with me. I live in New Haven, Connecticut, and am very into meditation and yoga and mindfulness practices and healing community. All the studios and places that are available yoga studios, meditation halls there were very few people of color, very few women of color. Very few people in the LGBTQ+ communities. I wanted that, and I figured that if I want that, it means that theres probably other people who do, too.
Psychoactive drugs tend to skew more educated and more white, with people of color being underrepresented in research studies, and generally offers fewer opportunities to the people who need it the most.
Healing communities are important, and within this are affinity groups. To me, affinity is like likeness it can be racial affinity, gender affinity or a connection to whatever career you might have. We are using it as sameness or likeness and identity, explains Washington. We are starting with some particular identities, including BIPOC communities, military veterans and transgender folks. We will bring on 40 volunteers who share these identities and train them. These volunteers will be on call three shifts per week, and theyll be able to offer support to people who call in and they want to integrate with someone sharing that part of their identity. We know that representation matters, and it builds trust. It opens the possibility for more vulnerability and safety. The communities that were focusing on are communities that have been made to be marginalized, and that are underserved within the current psychedelic space.
In addition to training volunteers to offer more inclusive support to marginalized groups, Fireside recently launched a $200K fund that is available to its volunteers who fall into these categories. After theyve completed a year of volunteering with Fireside, they will be able to apply for up to $10,000 for initiatives that make psychedelic medicine more available to a broader group of people.
With the equity initiative we have launched our equity fund that any of our affinity volunteers will have access to after they complete a year of service on the line. They can apply for up to $10,000, and the fund also has educational and internship collaborators and partners. The volunteers will have the option to apply to become students of these institutions. So for example, were working with Naropa University, as well as MAPS, Fluence and others. Many of those groups are offering reduced or free tuition, explains Washington. We are also able to offer paid internships working with renowned researchers and clinicians. We want to offer them more pathways, support and connections if they want to continue developing their careers within the psychedelic fields.
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Oklahoma bill to study mental health effects of ‘shrooms’ advances – Oklahoman.com
Posted: at 11:07 pm
'Magic Mushroom' psychedelic may ease anxiety, depression
The psychedelic drug in "magic mushrooms" has been found to help treat anxiety and depression in cancer patients. The substance, psilocybin, also called shrooms, is illegal in the United States.
USA TODAY
Bipartisan support is mountingfor legislation that would add an unusual new tool to combat the state's mental health crisis byseeking to legalize research of psychedelic substances.
The bill, authored by Rep. Daniel Pae, R-Lawton, would allow for the state's universities and research institutions to begin studyingpsilocybin and psilocin, the chemicals in "magic mushrooms"that produce a psychedelic state.
It is an attempt to build on and become involved in ongoingresearch that has shown positive results in psychedelics helping with mental health issues rangingfrom addiction to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The immediate goal of the bill is to help speed up thatresearch in hopes to lower suicide rates, especially among veterans, and provide health care professionals an additional treatment for a spectrum ofproblems, sponsors say.
"I thought about, as we move beyond this pandemic, how we can address the mental health crisis our state faces.With so many folks who are struggling right now, I think we need to think outside the box, we need to think creatively," Pae said.
If passed, the bill would allow clinical trials on psychedelics in relation to depression, anxiety, opioid use disorder and dementia, among others.
"These trials are going to be very much in controlled environments with folks who are overseeing it.We are going to be micro-dosing," Pae said.
While psychedelics are still a Schedule 1drug and federally illegal, the federal government has allowed states to conduct research on psychedelics, largely staying out of the way.
Federal overreach:Oklahoma legislature fights the feds as questions come from both sides of the aisle
During a House Public Health committee meeting, questions came up onthe intent of the bill and why the state needs to jump in when research is already happening elsewhere.
Rep. Logan Phillips, R-Mounds, who worked closely with Pae on the bill and made the presentation to the committee, responded that time is of the essence in trying to prevent suicide.
In the most recent available data from the National Center for Health Statistics, Oklahoma had 816 suicide deaths in 2019.Meaningforevery 100,000 peoplethere were just over 20 suicide deaths,eighth mostin the nation.
"By jumping into the field we can immediately start helping our people, and our veterans. And get these changes into our community at a much higher rate of speed," said Phillips, an Army veteran.
Viewpoint: Addressing mental health issues in the Black community requires attitude shift
"Most of the people I served with killed themselves after they came back, he said. This treatment could have helped my soldiers, my friends, my colleagues.So its a passion to me to make sure that we get this to where we are moving the needle quickly to actually help these people.
At the same time House Bill 3414gives room for researchers to work, it also lessens the penalty for those caught with psychedelics under 1.5 grams to a $400 fine. ButPae and Phillips said the bill is not meant to promote or allow growth and consumption outside of medical purposes.
"Early researchis already showing that this is a light switch, this is automatic treatment for PTSD (and)lowers suicidal thoughts," Phillips said.
The Morning Brew: Magic mushrooms lift severe depression in clinical trial
Much of the research being cited comes from the Johns Hopkins Center on Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, one of the only institutions of its kind in the world.
Over various studies conducted by the Johns Hopkins center, psychedelics have been shown to alleviate depression and reduce the urge to smoketobacco. One study found80% of participants lessened their smokingfrequency after the psychedelic trials.
A secondstudy reported that 80% of participants had fewer suicidal and depressive thoughts, andsomereportedovercoming a fear of death.
In 2020, Dr.Roland Griffiths, the Center's founding director and professor at John Hopkins,told Scientific American that psychedelics have helped researchers,peer into the basic neuroscience of how these drugs affect brain activity and worldview in a way that is ultimately very healthy.
In Oklahoma's Legislature, the idea of improving brain activity through psychedelics has robust support with 14co-sponsors standing with Pae's bill, including Democrats, Republicans and leadership in both chambers.
Report: Oklahoma's cannabis program 'most accessible' nationwide but enforcement lagging
Additionally, theOklahoma LegislativeMental Health Caucus is interested in thebill that would provide help to mental health institutions outside of typical infrastructureand program spending.
"We have to be creative in the ways that we approach this issue, and the ways that we approach care, and I'm willing, whether it's Johns Hopkins or any other research university, to support those endeavors, even though, you know, we might have a certain reaction,"said Rep. Merleyn Bell, D-Norman, co-chair of the Caucus.
That reaction, stemming from a 1960s' counterculture understanding of psychedelic drugs, may leave some asking questions.
ButBell thinksthe idea of working with psychedelics is not uncommon compared to recent decisionsmade by Oklahomans.
"It reminds me very much of the conversation that we had around medical marijuana not too many years ago, and we've seen the benefits of that not just economically but for the health of our citizens,"she said.
Busted: Officers conduct massive raid of black market marijuana, issue arrest warrants
For Pae, the intention is not to create an entirely new industry or allowmushroom farms to sprout up across the Sooner State.
"Honestly, I haven't really thought that farbecause I want to get this outof the session. I want to see where the research takes us in the bill," he said.
Pae expects the legislation willbe heard on the floor as early as this week or next week and, if passed, SenateAssistant Majority Floor LeaderLonniePaxton, R-Tuttle,is slated to take up the bill asprincipal author in the upper chamber.
Read more: Nonprofit's top priorities for Oklahoma's mental health focus on wellness in children
If passed, the research conducted under the bill's purview would result in a report given to the Legislature by 2025.
"Withthe results, we want to see how it can be done in a medically safe way for folks who really have these types of mental health challenges," Pae said.
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Terran Biosciences and University of Maryland, Baltimore announce exclusive licensing deal for a portfolio of patents and data supporting novel…
Posted: at 11:07 pm
NEW YORK, March 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Terran Biosciences, Inc. ("Terran") has entered into an agreement with the University of Maryland, Baltimore ("UMB") for a worldwide exclusive license to develop and commercialize a portfolio of UMB's patents and data to support a novel approach to the treatment of neurological and psychiatric illnesses with psychedelic therapeutics.
With this transaction, Terran further expands their broad pipeline of promising clinical stage CNS therapeutics and technologies. This intellectual property and data will also complement Terran's current portfolio of over 150 patents covering new compounds and applications in the psychedelic therapeutic space.
"We couldn't be more excited about these discoveries at UMB, which are some of the most innovative we've seen in psychedelic medicine," Dr. Sam Clark, Terran's CEO, commented, "These data represent a major breakthrough in the understanding of how psychedelics act on the brain. We look forward to advancing these assets to help patients suffering from devastating neuropsychiatric illnesses."
About Terran Biosciences, Inc.
Terran is a biotech platform company developing a portfolio of therapeutics and technologies for patients with neurological and psychiatric diseases. Backed by a number of life-science and tech investors, Terran has built a CNS-focused, tech-enabled drug development platform, and is rapidly advancing of number of late-stage assets, which include novel psychedelic-based therapeutics.
Terran Contact:
Dustin Tetzl, MDChief Business OfficerTerran Biosciences, Inc.[emailprotected]
SOURCE Terran Biosciences, Inc.
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Cybin Teams With Chopra Foundation To Foster Psychedelics Awareness – Benzinga – Benzinga
Posted: at 11:07 pm
This post contains sponsored advertising content. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.
Dr. Deepak Chopra recently stated that there was anurgent need for more effective treatmentsin the mental health space, a statement with which Doug Drysdale, CEO of Cybin Inc. (NYSE:CYBN) (NEO: CYBN), agrees. Drysdale stated that he believed that the largest barrier in the advancement of the flourishing psychedelics industry was the stigmatization and misinformation concerning psychedelic compounds.
He explained that many individuals who werent involved in the psychedelics sector knew so little about these compounds and
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NOTE TO INVESTORS:The latest news and updates relating to Cybin Inc. (NEO: CYBN) (NYSE:CYBN) are available in the companys newsroom athttps://ibn.fm/CYBN
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Cybin Teams With Chopra Foundation To Foster Psychedelics Awareness - Benzinga - Benzinga
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How My Drinking Was Used to Deny Me Treatment for Depression – Filter
Posted: at 11:07 pm
Five years ago, I called the hotline for adult psychological services at a major university hospitals psychiatry department. After completing a half-hour intake, during which I had disclosed problematic alcohol consumption, I was informed I could not receive treatment for my crippling depression because I must first graduate from addiction treatment. They quickly me routed into group services for alcohol use disorder.
I received a dual diagnosis, but the solution to both of them was apparently to stop drinking. By the departments reasoning, I couldnt worry about being depressed if I was dead from alcohol use. This was a strange logic; I had been suicidally depressed since I was 11, and at times alcohol was the only tether tying me to this Eartha force of vitality, joy and desire amidst my anhedonia.
The treatment plan, the development of which I was not involved in, had a secondary focus on SSRIs and cognitive behavioral therapy. The priority was getting me sober. Still, I attended the recommended groups and classes. Over the course of the next few months, I reduced my alcohol consumption as well as improving my mental health.
But while I felt I was making progress, the treatment providers disagreed. They became increasingly frustrated that my goal was to manage my alcohol use rather than abstaining; that I continued to use marijuana with no goal of modifying that behavior at all; and that I had additionally begun to pursue self-healing with psychedelics.
Marijuana had never caused me harm or brought any consequences to my health. No one in my life was concerned about it. Why would I stop? Conventional medications hadnt brought me relief from my depression or alcohol cravings, and psychedelics seemed to promise that. Why wouldnt I try something new?
Ultimately, I was discharged for non-compliance with the treatment plan.
The clinician I was working with suggested I enroll in a psychedelics research study, but everything I could find excluded participants with comorbidities like depression or substance use. It was the same reasoning the department itself gave me when I first accessed services: that a condition can only be evaluated and treated when its isolated as a single variable.
Since I couldnt access psychedelics in a therapeutic setting, I pursued them on my own. Ultimately, I was discharged for non-compliance with the treatment plan.
In what other area of medicine would a patient be denied all medical services due to their partial non-compliance with a prescribed treatment, or use of an alternative treatment? Diabetes care isnt withheld because a patient ate dessert. Antibiotics wouldnt be denied to someone whos also trying homeopathics or a salt lamp at home. And yet substance use is considered a valid reason to deny medical treatment, including treatment for substance use disorders.
Disclosing substance use instead of lying about it disqualified me from treatment of what was, in my case, the root cause. The stereotype is that people who use drugs are manipulative liars, but frequently the health care system leaves us no other choice.
Once alcohol use disorder was stamped onto my medical records, along with non-problematic consumption of two of the least-stigmatized controlled substances, medical appointments rarely focused on anything else. It didnt matter if the visit was for an ear infection. Id greet the provider as a person, and then my medical record would transform me into an addict.
I remember the look in one psychiatrists eye when I told him Id relapsed. Ive never seen more glee.
Ive worked with wonderful providers, but they have not been my predominant experience. Most required a confessional, unwilling to move on from the alcohol use disorder part of my medical history until Id satisfied them with a salacious story.
I came to learn which anecdotes and word choices got the biggest reactions for the least emotional labor. Over the years I developed a tight routine, as though I was a traveling road comic who tells dark jokes at which no one laughs. It feels fair to say that the persistence with which clinicians pursued and felt entitled to these preconceived narratives kept me mired in my addiction.
Patients should not be forced to relive (or invent) addiction-related traumas during every clinical encounter before they can be offered care. I remember the look in one particular addiction psychiatrists eye when I told him Id relapsed over the weekend. Ive never seen more glee. He furiously scribbled a script for Antabuse. Thisll teach ya! Im gonna make you so sick from alcohol, youll never want it again!
Another spent the majority of our interactions asking about every conceivable instance in which cannabis might have caused me harm, searching for symptoms to justify a diagnosis that didnt exist. Eventually, he gave up and declared that I was lying or in denial.
Mandatory treatment is known to be harmful, not helpful. It demands adherence to a prohibitionist code under which drugs are associated with pleasure, making all abstinence virtuous and all use harmful without allowing for nuance or individual experience.
The treatment plan that would later work for me ended up being psychedelic use, and therapy from a queer-focused practice. Which makes sense, because these were the things that I had chosen and pursued according to my needs.
Photograph by jarmoluk via Pixabay
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How My Drinking Was Used to Deny Me Treatment for Depression - Filter
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Seelos Therapeutics: Year-End Results and Business Highlights Microdose – Microdose Psychedelic Insights
Posted: at 11:07 pm
Even if not on most peoples sexiest shroom stock list, Seelos Therapeuticshas been a solid presence in the psychedelic medicine space for some time.
For those who might not know, Seelos is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of novel therapeutics to treat central nervous system (CNS) disorders and other rare conditions.
The company has a portfolio of non-psychedelic compounds but its their SLS-002, an intranasal ketamine, thats made them an often overlooked but serious psychedelic player.
In 2019, the FDA granted Fast Track designation for Seelos SLS-002 molecule (ketamine) and Seelos has begun dosing patients as part of a study for Major Depressive Disorder giving the company a leg-up in the approval process of psychedelics.
With $20 million in capital raised in November, Seelos now has $78.7mm in cash on hand, a very healthy number that can help them withstand the current market pullback.
Theyre also in advanced clinical trials for other compounds like SLS-005, which is moving forward to Phase IIb/III after approval of its IND application by the FDA.
A pretty solid pipeline. See below for the companys 2021 year-end results and business highlights.
NEWS PROVIDED BY
Seelos Therapeutics, Inc.
Mar 07, 2022, 08:00 ET
NEW YORK, March 7, 2022 /PRNewswire/ Seelos Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: SEEL), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of therapies for central nervous system disorders and rare diseases, today announced its year-end 2021 business and clinical update.
In the second half of 2021, we continued to accomplish several significant milestones and continued to execute in the face of one of the most difficult environments for publicly-traded biotech companies that Ive seen in my career, said Raj Mehra Ph.D., Chairman and CEO of Seelos. We began the placebo-controlled Part 2 of the registration directed study of SLS-002 and plan to enroll in over 30 sites. The SLS-005 IV trehalose programs registrational study in ALS, which was accepted into the HEALEY ALS Platform Trial at Harvard, commenced dosing participants in February 2022 and our IND was accepted to study SLS-005 in spinocerebellar ataxia and its Phase IIb/III pivotal study should begin dosing in Q2 2022. We have begun additional in vivo studies with our Parkinsons disease focused gene therapy program SLS-004 after demonstrating its capability of reducing alpha-synuclein expression. We look forward to continuing to provide meaningful updates on the current state of progress on all of our programs as well as additional initiatives.
Seelos Clinical Update
SLS-002 (intranasal racemic ketamine)
SLS-005 (IV Trehalose)
SLS-004 and SLS-007 (Parkinsons disease gene therapy programs)
Seelos Business Update
Contact Information:
Anthony Marciano
Head of Corporate Communications
Seelos Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: SEEL)
300 Park Avenue, 2ndFloor
New York, NY 10022
(646) 293-2136
https://seelostherapeutics.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/seelos
Mike Moyer
Managing Director
LifeSci Advisors, LLC
250 West 55th St., Suite 3401
New York, NY 10019
(617) 308-4306
SOURCE Seelos Therapeutics, Inc.
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No worries: Severe anxiety disorders to get the Incannex, Monash Uni treatment via psychedelics within vir … – Stockhead
Posted: at 11:07 pm
Incannex and Monash University will collaborate on ground-breaking research to advance treatment for severe forms of anxiety disorders using virtual reality combined with psychedelics.
Medicinal cannabis and psychedelic clinical development companyIncannex Healthcare (ASX:IHL)has joined with Monash University to develop a novel treatment that combines Virtual Reality (VR) and psychedelics.
Incannex has executed an exclusive, global license in perpetuity over an immersive therapeutic VR environment developed by BrainPark, a state-of-the-art clinical research platform at Monash Universitys Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health.
The license allows Incannex to investigate use of Monashs VR therapy tool in combination with a psychedelic drug to develop a new treatment for severe forms of one or more anxiety disorders.
The established VR treatment uses an exposure-based approach, providing triggering stimuli in a graded and controlled manner, known as Exposure and Response Prevention or ERP.
By adding specialised clinical support and the administration of a psychedelic drug, the combined approach may allow for the development of a totally new therapy for severe forms of anxiety mental illness.
The research will be led by Monashs The Clinical Psychedelic Research Lab, Turner Institute and Department of Psychiatry Head Dr Paul Liknaitzky and BrainPark, Turner Institute Director Professor Murat Ycel.
Monashs Department of Psychiatry Head Professor Suresh Sundram and BrainPark Deputy Director Dr Rebecca Segrave will collaborate on the project.
The parties are working towards a research agreement for the first of these trials, which will assess optimal dose, safety, and tolerability of the combination treatment method.
Incannex CEO and Managing Director Joel Latham said the company was delighted to start the project with Monash and further use of combined psychedelics and VR therapy.
The combination of psychedelic compounds with an evidence-based VR therapy is a leading edge in the field of mental health treatments, Latham said.
We look forward to providing more detail about the project in due course when clinical trial planning has been finalised.
This is Incannexs second psychedelic therapy clinical program. Incannexs initial psychedelic clinical trial is using psilocybin to treat severe generalised anxiety disorder and has already achieved FDA comments and HREC approval to commence patient recruitment.
The research deal follows Incannexs much anticipated Nasdaq listing with the company hoping to attract keen medical cannabis investors as it pursues North American growth.
Incannex commenced trading on the Nasdaq under ticker Code IXHL on February 25.
American Depositary Shares (ADS) representing Incannex ordinary shares started trading following a declaration of effectiveness by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of its registration statement on Form 20-F and formal approval from Nasdaq upon meeting listing requirements.
Each IXHL ADS represents 25 ordinary shares of Incannex with the company simultaneously retaining its listing of ordinary shares on the Australian bourse.
The Nasdaq listing is part of the companys goal to be more accessible to a wider audience of investors with sophisticated understandings of medicinal cannabinoids, psychedelic therapies, and pharmaceutical development.
This article was developed in collaboration with Incannex, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.
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Pony.ai agrees to recall 3 of its autonomous vehicles – The Robot Report
Posted: at 11:06 pm
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Pony.ai develops autonomous robotaxi and trucking technology. | Source: Pony.ai
Pony.ai agreed to issue a recall on some versions of its autonomous driving software following a car accident that occurred in October 2021. The company recalled the now repaired vehicles because they used software associated with the crash.
During the October accident, a Pony.ai vehicle hit a street sign on a median during a turn in Fremont, California while in autonomous mode. No one was injured in the incident, but it prompted the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to suspend the companys driverless testing permit.
While there are plenty of crashes reported involving autonomous vehicles, this one stood out because the vehicle was operating in autonomous mode and didnt involve any other vehicles.
According to reporting from Reuters, Pony.ai said that the crash occurred less than 2.5 seconds after the autonomous driving system shut down. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) told the company that it believed the software had a safety defect, which lead to the requested recall.
Pony.ai complied with the request and updated the software in the three vehicles. According to the agency, this is the first recall of an autonomous driving system.
Pony.ai received its autonomous driving permit from the California DMV six months before it suspended it. At the time, Pony.ai was the eighth company to receive the permit, after Apollo, AutoX, Cruise, Nuro, Waymo, WeRide and Zoox.
Earlier this month, Cruise and Waymo received Drivered Deployment permits from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). The permit allows the companies to charge customers fares for their services. The permits require both companies to have a safety driver present in the vehicles at all times.
This week, Pony.ai announced that it is now valued at $8.5 billion dollars after the first close of the companys Series D funding round. The company ended its last funding round at a $5.3 billion valuation.
Pony.ai plans to use the funding to further augment hiring and enter more strategic partnerships. It also plans to invest in research and development, including global testing of its fleet of robotaxis and robotrucking and moving closer to mass production and commercial deployment of its fleet.
The company did not disclose details on the amount raised in the funding round so far, but plans to announce totals when the full round closes.
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Encouraging women in tech is essential to protect society against AI bias – TechTalks
Posted: at 11:06 pm
By Xiaoman Hu
Encouraging women in AI has never been more urgent. A study by the World Economic Forum noted a gender disparity of 78 percent male versus 22 percent female in AI and data science. This disparity isnt just a challenge within the workforce. It reflects a highly nuanced issue that goes beyond any single workplace and if not addressed will have highly negative implications for society.
We have seen a lot of work to encourage girls and women to become interested in STEM and address gaps in digital skills at an earlier age than in the past. Yet now, there appears to be less effort to support women as they transition from higher education into a sustainable career in tech. This is a challenge for the industry. But the real problem is that as AI becomes ubiquitous in daily life, without a technology workforce that accurately reflects the structure of society, AI-based decisions are constrained by the limited societal and cultural biases of their designers. The impact of such homogeneity in AI decisions and bias has already been seen in examples such as the automation of credit card and mortgage applications, to resume screening and other areas.
The industry challenge is not due to a lack of skills. Research from the Turing Institute suggests women are trailing behind men with industry-relevant skills such as computer science, data preparation and exploration, general-purpose computing, databases, big data, machine learning, statistics, and mathematics. Yet much of this is not due to formal skills, but rather confidence by women in stating these abilities during recruitment and in the workplace. In the tech world where technical skills are needed, soft skills are sometimes dismissed but in order to move forward, there needs to be a greater focus on leadership and mentorship to build confidence and encourage a more diverse workforce. We say that stereotypes must be combatted from a young age yet a gap remains. For example, within the tech sector, women generally have higher levels of formal education than their male counterparts yet academic citations are fewer suggesting there is a lack of confidence in sharing academic knowledge. The Turing Institute finds that only 20 percent of UK data and AI researchers on Google Scholar are women. Of the 45 researchers with more than 10,000 citations, only five were women.
When I say that women need to have mentors and role models, I write from firsthand experience. It was only after winning a mathematics modeling competition in university that I considered a related career. This inspired me to write a blog on machine learning algorithms. The easy-to-understand method employed helped the blog garner over 5 million views, and eventually led to a career in programming. When I became a programmer and found myself working as the only woman in a room of men typically 10-15 years older, I struggled to relate and realized the need for a community of like-minded people.
In April 2020 I started to manage operations for MindSpore, an AI framework developed by Huawei, just as it became open source. MindSpore is Huaweis alternative AI framework to Googles TensorFlow and Facebooks PyTorch with comparable capabilities but 20 percetn fewer lines of code. Launched in September 2019, it is endorsed by major universities including Peking University, University of Edinburgh, and Imperial College. Today, MindSpore boasts over 1.3 million downloads and an interactive community indicated by over 19,000 issues, over 52,000 pull requests, and over 16,000 stars (the equivalent of a like among developers).
In 2021, open-source component downloads grew 73 percent YOY. With the rapid growth in the global adoption of open source technology, diversity in open source communities is also increasing. The MindSpore Women in Tech Community emphasizes seminar-like gatherings which provide women a safe space to discuss the challenges they face in the workplace. Mentoring is important. For example, in 2020, when the community was just in its infancy, a student at one of our events explained she was getting good grades but was worried about a career in programming. She sought advice from more senior programmers and tech leaders. By the time she graduated she had no need to worry and was able to choose from one of several offers. Not only did she feel more confident but was able to give back to the community by sharing her experience with new students, those who were now in the position she had been the previous year. It is experiences like this that will keep women in tech. When they stay, tech also benefits.
But encouraging women isnt simply about creating diversity within the industry to enable greater gender balance. The benefits stretch beyond the sector and into the societal benefits. With the digitalization of many traditional sectors, the pervasive nature of AI demands that it not only provides efficiency but is also inclusive. It is only by broadening the pool of talent that we can avoid data-led decisions skewed by bias. Establishing communities that actively foster participation and diverse voices is an important step.
Bias in AI starts with the initial formulation of problems. The questions are naturally constrained by the experiences of the designers and programmers. This in turn impacts the quality of the data and the way it is handled. So what will be the societal impact if there is not greater diversity?
So in conclusion, now that our lives are digitally-driven, we must ensure that women can enjoy the benefit of technology for generations to come rather than be negatively impacted.
About the author
Xiaoman Hu is the Director of Operations at MindSpore Community
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Here to stay: Supply chains gear up for investments in AI – Supply Chain Dive
Posted: at 11:06 pm
Editor's note: This article is the latest in a series that looks into the ways supply chains, warehouses and manufacturing facilities are investing in technology. Here's the previous story.
Artificial intelligence isn't yet perfect.The technology has led to some major business flubs (like that time Microsoft's AI chatbot "learned" to be racist, sexist and anti-Semetic in 2016). But AI is not going away in the supply chain. In fact, it's prevalence is expected to grow.
In the 2021 MHI Annual Industry Report, 17% of respondents said they use AI already, and another 45% predicted they'll use it in five years. The survey of more than 1,000 supply chain professionals worldwide also found that 25% plan to make investments in AI products in the next three years.
"[AI] is very complex, but what we can use is very, very simple. People don't need to have a deep understanding of the algorithms," said Ben Lynch, director of business data analytics at DHL Supply Chain. "I never thought it would be able to move as quickly as it has, and it's only going to get better."
In the last five years, AI has shifted the relationship DHL has with its customers.
The company went from giving customers information for something that's already happened to "something that's a bit more predictive," Lynch said. "Through AI, machine learning and data availability, now we can give them insights into not just what's happened but what's going to happen."
That transition has been fueled by sophisticated algorithms that can handle the sheer amount of data collected.
"Every two years, we are generating as much data that has ever been created. By 2023, we'll have twice as much data in the world. Because of this, there's been a big need for technology to help support this data," Lynch said.
AI is also enabling the advancement of other kinds of technologies in the supply chain, like robotics, said Thomas Evans, robotics chief technology officer at Honeywell.
% of respondents who plan to invest in products and services over the next three years
"The complexity and the way-quicker access to AI through third party providers, and also the ability to build AI platforms and deploy them, is a drastic change and asset to supply chain logistics," Evans said. "It's only going to get more advanced as we harness more and more data."
AI isn't a panacea for business problems, though. It has experienced growing pains.
More recently than Microsoft's chatbot ordeal, the online real estate company Zillow shutdown Zillow Offers, an AI-fueled home buying and flipper service,because the company bought houses for higher than they could resell. The company took a $304 million inventory write down in the third quarter of this 2021.
But in the right use cases, AI is sophisticated, effective and already paying off.
A McKinsey report found that, for early adopters, AI-enabled supply chain management improved logistics costs by 15%, inventory levels by 35%, and service levels by 65%, compared to "slower-moving competitors."
The biggest gap Lynch sees to further adoption is simplifying data and "getting data and business to speak the same language," he said.
"As the amount of technology and digitalization increased and opened up more and more data, the struggle we've had is, how do you take this data and transform it into something that makes more sense for the operator?" he posed.
That will help drive decision-making on the operator end.
Lynch doesn't expect the flow of data to stop, either. He said he thinks it will grow along with the booming e-commerce landscape, fueled by all the consumer data drawn from that online activity.
"Now that we can understand what a consumer is going to buy next week, how do we set up our warehouses?" he said. "The technology get better and better and we'll get a really good sense at the consumer level as opposed to the aggregate supply chain level."
Wider roll out of AI will also depend on robust cybersecurity, Evans said. If data can't be captured, stored and shared with company partners securely, it becomes a liability instead of a boost.
"That's why we're seeing some of the vulnerabilities and ransomware concerns bigger businesses are having," he said, adding that, right now, he's working on a commercial product release and said that 80% to 90% of his engineers are focused on product security.
As the value of data to run AI systems become more valuable to businesses, they become valuable to bad actors, too. "Over time it becomes more of a target," Evans said.
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