Magic mushrooms to treat depression? COMPASS Pathways pushes forward with U.S. patent for psilocybin therapy – Straight.com

Back in early 2018, the Straight published a cover story on the growing field of research into psychedelic plants and chemicals.

This wasn't the paper's first foray into this field, of course.

In its earliest days as a poineering alt-weekly, the Straightspilled pleny of inkon this topic.

Most notably, artist Rand Holmes ran the legendary Harold Hedd comic strip in the paper in the early 1970s, featuring a beloved, long-haired, drug-loving hippie.

More recently in 2007, there was a feature in the Straight examining whether a psychedelic plant called ibogaine had any therapeutic benefits for people addicted to opiates.

But the 2018 story, by Travis Lupick, was differentit reflected how far psychedelic research had come in entering the mainstream.

The B.C. Centre on Substance Use, housed at the University of British Columbia, was by that time one of the world's leading centres of this field of study.

Psychedelics are not only being examined in the field of addiction medicine, but also for their efficacy in addressing posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, and eating disorders.

Psychedelic plants and drugs have been used for thousands of years in traditional healing and spiritual ceremonies, and contemporary western science has not paid them much attention, UBC researcher Kenneth Tupper told Lupick. Now theres new interest in these traditional practices, as well as interest in bringing a clinical, scientific approach to the substances contained in these plants.

That same year,the mental-health-care company COMPASS Pathways was granted "Breakthrough Therapy" designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its psilocybin therapy for treatment-resistant depression.

This designation is granted "if preliminary clinical evidence shows that it may demonstrate substantial improvement over available therapy", according to the company, which is based in the United Kingdom.

Earlier this year, COMPASSobtained a U.S. patent for a psilocybin-therapy protocol for treating patients with depression.

Psilocybin is the ingredient that gets people high when they eat magic mushrooms.

The company stated that the psychedelic agent was "well tolerated when administered to healthy adult volunteers with support from specially trained therapists in a randomized placebo-controlled trial".

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The feds have designated it as a breakthrough therapy. From January, Compass Pathways is running a 216-patient Phase 2B clinical trialtypically the second-to-last stage before a drug gets the FDAs nodand has made enough synthetic doses of the psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms to supply more than 30,000 patients. Its raised $58 million in venture funding from powerful tech figures including Trump ally Peter Thiel, investor Christian Angermayer, and Bitcoin booster Michael Novogratz. Thomas Insel, former director of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, and Paul Summergrad, former head of the American Psychiatric Association, are on its board of advisers. The advisers bona fides are at least as important as the eight-figure funding. For the FDA to say yes to shroom therapy, youre going to have to be more rigorous, and more risk-averse, and more Catholic than the pope, says Insel, whos also an investor. Youre going to have to do this in a way that is very carefully scientific, with the best scientists, the best clinical trials, the most conservative and rigorous design, and the most careful data analysis. Read the full story by clicking the link in our bio.

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There's an interesting back story to COMPASS.

It was cofounded in 2016 by the married couple George Goldsmith and Ekaterina Malievskaia when they had difficulty finding help for a family member with depression.

They obtained financial backing fromPayPal cofounder Peter Thiel and cryptocurrency kingpin Michael Novogratz, which has enabled the company to endure the long and expensive U.S regulatory process.

For more about the potential of psychedelics in treating depression, check out the video below.

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Magic mushrooms to treat depression? COMPASS Pathways pushes forward with U.S. patent for psilocybin therapy - Straight.com