BetterLife Pharma Inc (CSE:BETR, OTCQB:BETRF) has said a recent study of the nootropic effects of LSD, published in the scientific journal Experimental Neurology, has provided new evidence that LSD has nootropic effects, which are believed to be driven by neuroplasticity promotion.
Researchers of the study, "Nootropic effects of LSD: Behavioral, molecular and computational evidence," have found that LSD increased neuroplasticity in “human brain organoids, increased novelty preference in rats, and improved memory performance in humans.” Increased structural plasticity in the brain neurons, mainly prefrontal cortex, has also been linked to sustained antidepressant effects.
“These results confirm that our proprietary BETR-001, an LSD analog, retains the anti-depressant and neural plasticity activity of LSD without causing hallucination,” BetterLife Pharma CEO Ahmad Doroudian said in a statement.
“The fact that BETR-001 can promote structural plasticity in the prefrontal cortex neurons indicates its therapeutic effects in depression and related disorders, providing a potential patient friendly treatment addressing a very large unmet medical need affecting large number of patients globally.”
The research has validated BetterLife’s own neuroplasticity study, which similarly demonstrated that BETR-001 increased the structural complexity of neurons in rats, indicating neural plasticity activity. In certain measurements of structural plasticity in neurons, BETR-001 performed better than ketamine in this model, the company said.
BETR-001, which is in preclinical and Investigational New Drug-enabling studies, is a non-hallucinogenic and non-controlled LSD derivative. It is unregulated, which means it can be self-administered, the company said.
BetterLife’s synthesis patent for BETR-001 eliminates regulatory hurdles and its pending patent for composition and method of use covers treatment of depression, cluster headaches, post-traumatic stress disorder and other neuro-psychiatric and neurological disorders.
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