Excerpts from the press release today: “ATAI Life Sciences, a global biotechnology company builder that envisions an end to mental illnesses, announced the close of a $24 million financing round.

Several globally renowned investors like Peter Thiel as well as Steve Jurvetson and Maryanna Saenko of Future Ventures join ATAI’s numerous other reputable backers like Michael Novogratz’ Galaxy Digital, Thor Bjorgolfsson, Efrem Kamen, and ATAI founder Christian Angermayer’s Apeiron Investment Group.

“We are thrilled to have partners like Peter Thiel and Future Ventures with us for the next phase of our journey,” said Christian Angermayer, Founder of ATAI. “Both Peter and Steve have been prescient in identifying paradigm shifting enterprises, and we’re honored by their trust in ATAI’s vision.”

ATAI is recognized as the world’s leading mental health biotech company, leveraging a decentralized data-driven platform that combines an emphasis on psychedelic compounds with non-psychedelics and artificial intelligence. ATAI’s portfolio currently includes: psilocybin for treatment resistant depression; ibogaine for opioid use disorder; arketamine for treatment resistant depression; deuterated etifoxine for anxiety; and a company designing next-generation psychedelic medicines using computational biophysics.”

Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and the sales of relatively ineffective antidepressant drugs are $14B per year, and growing. “Given the immediate and long-term mental health impacts of coronavirus containment efforts, the urgency of the mental health crisis will only grow. We are more committed than ever to ensuring people around the world have access to safe and effective treatment alternatives.” — ATAI CEO & co-founder Florian Brand

Here is the current collection of ATAI companies:

• Compass Pathways: synthetic psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression (TRD), in phase IIb clinical trials and an FDA Breakthrough Therapy Designation
• Perception Neuroscience: Arketamine for patients with TRD. Compared to esketamine (FDA approved), animal models of arketamine suggest greater antidepressant efficacy and less dissociative effects, perhaps affording out-patient use
• GABA Therapeutics: deuterated etifoxine, a rapid onset anxiolytic without benzodiazepine-like side effects, for generalized anxiety disorder
• DemeRx: ibogaine and noribogaine for opioid use disorders, with clinical trial applications for phase II testing
• Neuronasal: emergency through-the-nose concussion treatment;
• Kures: deuterated mitragynine as a low-risk alternative for pain management and opioid dependence therapy
• Innoplexus: AI for accelerating drug development and trial design
• Entheogenix: AI-driven drug design platform for psychedelics focused on optimizing onset times and neurogenerative/anti-inflammatory/hallucinogenic effects.

And here is more information on the psychedelic medicines.

Free your mind and the rest will follow — in vogue again

9 responses to “How to Change your Mind with ATAI 🍄 ref. Michael Pollan”

  1. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Listening to the new podcast interview of ATAI CEO Florian Brand, starting at minute 3:30

    Reply
  2. andershjemdahl Avatar
    andershjemdahl

    This is an exceptionally interesting field with so much unrealized (hitherto stymied) potential to help so many people – kudos for supporting it, and looking forward to following developments!

    Reply
  3. sbove Avatar
    sbove

    A++

    Reply
  4. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    thx. And Forbes just wrote an article too.

    “Mental health is poised to become the world’s leading disease burden,” board member Camm said in an exclusive email. “ATAI is advancing an evidence-based approach across a portfolio of medicines, each aimed at the various mental health challenges we face across the world today."

    Reply
  5. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    From the May 2020 issue of Town & Country:

    "You are not hallucinating: Psychedelic drugs, demonized by politicians, prosecutors, doctors, parents, and virtually everyone else for the last 50 years, are showing remarkable promise as a treatment for a host of significant health conditions, including depression, PTSD, addiction, inflammation, and more. Venture capital is rushing in.

    Psychedelics have evolved, in society’s eyes, from an evil into one of science’s best hopes in treating classes of mental illness that are growing throughout the U.S. and for which the number of consistently successful treatments is approximately zero.

    Though not well designed by today’s standards, many early studies showed impressive results. Moreover, there appeared to be no such thing as a lethal dose—something that cannot be said even about many over-the-counter medications."

    Reply
  6. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    and now $80M raised for sub-company Compass Pathways to prepare for Phase 3 clinical trials as a FDA Breakthrough Therapy for depression. news:

    "Compass said it is conducting the world’s first large-scale psilocybin therapy clinical trial, in 20 sites across nine countries in Europe and North America. “Our mission has always been to accelerate patient access to evidence-based innovation in mental health. This is more important than ever now, with COVID-19 challenging our mental resilience,” George Goldsmith, CEO and co-founder of Compass, said in a written statement. “This fundraise shows that our investors recognise this urgent need for innovation in mental health, and will enable us to do more research and development, bringing therapies safely to those who need them, as quickly as possible.”

    Reply
  7. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    followed by the COMPASS IPO Filing…

    Bloomberg: “We are motivated by the need to find better ways to help and empower people suffering with mental health challenges who are not helped by existing therapies,” Compass said in its filing. “Early signals from academic studies have shown that psilocybin therapy may have the potential to improve outcomes for patients suffering with depression.”

    The initial funding round valued Compass at $16 million and the IPO will see the initial investors realizing a multiple of 10 times of their investment, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Compass’s largest shareholder is psychedelic drug firm Atai Life Sciences AG, which has invested in several compounds studied for treatment of mental illness and opioid addiction."

    Reply
  8. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    And now, Thiel Capital led the $125M Series C in
    ATAI, the largest so far in psychedelic science.

    “ATAI’s great virtue is to take mental illness as seriously as we should have been taking all illness all along."
    — Peter Thiel in CNBC

    "Almost a billion people suffer from mental health problems worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Of the 322 million people globally that have depression, roughly a third are treatment-resistant"

    Reply
  9. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    IPO update: atai is about to go public. Here is a somewhat humorous review of the company (while mostly negative, the bull case made me chuckle):

    "If you’ve ever taken acid, you know the scoop. It’s pointless trying to explain how powerful hallucinogens are to anyone who has never dabbled. Even without personally experiencing the incredulousness of hallucinogenic substances, the bull thesis is still easy to imagine.

    The Fourth Industrial Revolution is ushering in an era where people below a certain intelligence level won’t have gainful employment. That minimum required intelligence threshold will only increase over time. That’s a huge problem because jobs aren’t just about income, they provide self-actualization. While income can be replaced, the mental health effects of joblessness will be a much harder problem to solve. People are going to be bored out of their minds and largely depressed with no real sense of purpose. And we’re not convinced “the passion economy” will solve the problem.

    Psychedelics offer mankind a way to expand the notion of reality beyond what we know today. Mental health problems will become a thing of the past as everyone is able to alter their consciousness to achieve something – if not happiness, at least the absence of pain and suffering. Psychedelic medicines could transform the pharmaceutical industry such that they’re the predominantly prescribed therapeutics for mental health."

    Reply

Leave a Reply to jurvetson Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *