Numinus Wellness Inc. (TSX-V:NUMI, OTC:LKYSF) announced that it has been granted approval from Health Canada to carry out psychedelic-assisted therapy using psilocybin to treat an applicant with treatment-resistant depression.
The company said in a statement that it is among the first to make use of Health Canada’s amended Special Access Program (SAP), which was changed on January 5, 2022, to provide access to psychedelic compounds on a case-by-case basis for patients with a serious or life-threatening condition where conventional treatments have failed, are unsuitable, or are not available in Canada.
It also marks Numinus’ first psilocybin-assisted therapy treatment outside of ongoing clinical trials.
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The psychedelic-assisted therapy treatment, which the company said has shown a great deal of promise in treating depression in recent clinical trials and studies, will take place at one of Numinus’ Montreal clinics. It will include several preparatory and integration therapy sessions, medical consults, and one psilocybin-dosing session.
“All practitioners involved in the treatment have been trained through Numinus’ proprietary psilocybin-assisted therapy protocol and Numinus will partner with Psygen Labs, an approved Health Canada supplier, to provide the synthetic psilocybin to be taken orally during the dosing session,” the company said.
Numinus CEO Payton Nyquvest said he was proud the company was helping Canadians with mental health challenges in ways that were not previously available, including using psilocybin-assisted therapy through Health Canada’s SAP.
“The SAP recognizes a growing body of research that has consistently shown the efficacy of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to treat a broad range of mental health conditions that are extremely difficult to treat with conventional therapies,” Nyquvest said.
"We hope that our first psilocybin-assisted therapy treatment is the beginning for more opportunities for Canadian patients to obtain safe access to treatment and care in the mental health sector through psychedelic medicine."
Numinus’ Quebec regional medical director Andrew Bui-Nguyen, who completed the SAP application, added that to the company’s knowledge, this was the first Health Canada SAP approval for psilocybin-assisted therapy for a person suffering from treatment-resistant depression in Quebec.
“Numinus has been working with this applicant through other available services over an extended period and we are proud that we can now provide this deeply important treatment,” Bui-Nguyen said.
The company said Numinus-affiliate physicians plan to make additional SAP applications for clients suffering from a range of mental health conditions in British Columbia and Quebec.
Numinus Wellness is a mental health and wellness company focused on advancing innovative and evidence-based psychedelic-assisted therapies.
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