There is distinct investor excitement around PsyBio Therapeutics Corp. (CVE:PSYB), a promising biotechnology company developing a portfolio of psychoactive compounds aimed at the treatment of mental health disorders. The US-based company will debut on the TSX Venture Exchange on Thursday using the ticker symbol “PSYB” with dual listing plans.
PsyBio believes a paradigm shift for the treatment of mental health issues is “long overdue” and is focused on developing a new class of drugs.
The company has a collaboration with Miami University, in Ohio where they have filed intellectual property for biosynthesized psilocybin, its intermediates, and other molecules. They have retained the global exclusive rights to a proprietary platform technology that biologically synthesizes psilocybin and other targeted next generation psychoactive compounds that are produced naturally in fungi and plants.
According to the company, their proprietary biosynthesis drug discovery platform is likely to spur the “rapid generation” of highly stable compounds “far cheaper, faster and greener” than any other method.
Proactive sat down with PsyBio Therapeutics co-founder and CEO Evan Levine to learn more about how the biotechnology company is working towards the discovery of new valuable target molecules and advancing its products towards Investigational New Drug (IND) applications.
Levine has a strong track record as the former CEO of Adventrx Pharmaceuticals and managing partner at Brown Simpson Asset Management.
Proactive: What are the reasons for PsyBio going public now?
Evan Levine: PsyBio Therapeutics was founded and is managed by a multi-talented group of executives that not only have extensive drug experience but also possess in-depth capital markets expertise. In the last year, both the exchanges and the investment community have been very welcoming to listing and funding companies that are doing research in the psychedelic medicine industry. Our team received a tremendous amount of investment interest from top tier dedicated health care funds in our oversubscribed go public round.
Can you talk about the groundbreaking work PsyBio is doing in developing a portfolio of psychoactive compounds for the treatment of mental health disorders?
The results in the clinic demonstrating that psilocybin, one of the more prominent psychoactive compounds in the magic mushroom, for treating mental health and other disorders are in my opinion, indisputable. However, PsyBio is taking a more holistic approach to working with these naturally occurring tryptamines. We are looking to exploit the interactions between certain metabolites and optimize tryptamine combinations that have superior characteristics than monotherapy psilocybin.
PsyBio works in collaboration with the engineering and psychology departments at Miami University. The engineering team works on new discovery and strain and pathway optimization, the psychology department runs the experimentation through animal models. We believe we are one of the first researching teams designing drugs based on these metabolic interactions and we have multiple patents that we have filed based on our inventions. We have an exciting year ahead and will enjoy a tremendous amount of data to share with the community.
Do you expect your collaboration with Miami University in Ohio to enable the rapid generation of stable psychoactive compounds cheaper and faster?
Our initial collaboration is with Dr J. Andrew Jones who runs a lab in the chemical engineering department at Miami University. Dr Jones accomplished a research first! He and his team of students, post-docs and research professionals published and filed patents on the ability to engineer genetically modified bacteria to produce tryptamines cheaper, faster and greener than any published method. We have expanded that research agreement and are taking advantage of the vivarium at Miami that we have full access to run a plethora of experiments on optimized tryptamines. We are not only working with the magic mushroom with these techniques, we are also studying other plants, fungi and non-natural products for an improved therapeutic benefit. We are also very open to partnership and collaboration within the community.
You are working in the lab on several psychedelically inspired compounds from different fungi and plants. Will this work potentially lead to a new class of drugs?
The entire purpose of the research being conducted at PsyBio Therapeutics is to improve patient outcome in a variety of indications. We have already moved two of our molecules outside of the research laboratories and are undergoing process development and the initiation of clinical batch manufacturing. The other compounds that we are optimizing will undergo the same pathway. We are co-developing psilocybin as a monotherapy as we can provide drug cheaper, faster and greener than any other published method and the optimized cocktail as well.
Are you preparing an investigational new drug (IND) application to study any of these compounds?
Our goal is to at least file an IND on psilocybin by the end of the year and file on at least one optimized variation the following year.
Where do you see the psychoactive medications industry in three to five years? And what does this mean for you as a company?
I believe that the treatment for depression and anxiety for the last 50 years has been barbaric. These compounds were initially studied in the 1950’s and were demonstrating efficacy but research came to a close halt due to the controlled substances act and has recently experienced a robust resurgence. I personally think it is indisputable that we see this new therapy replace the market of toxic antidepressants. Why would anybody ever want to choose a typical antidepressant that takes weeks to start working and experience undesirable side effects when they can experience this novel therapy that is neither addictive nor lethal and based on published research, have an almost immediate positive therapeutic benefit.
Is there any other core message the market needs to know about PsyBio?
I think what separates us from a lot of biotechnology companies entering the space is our intellectual property position. The most important foundations to any company is the team and what does the team own.
Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at uttara@proactiveinvestors.com
Follow her on Twitter: @UttaraProactive