[ExI] The High-Stakes Race to Engineer New Psychedelic Drugs

[John Grigg]

"We are, as you have probably read, in the throes of a “psychedelic
renaissance.” Compelling clinical work conducted at New York University,
Imperial College, Johns Hopkins, and elsewhere showed that long-outlawed
drugs such as N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), LSD, and psilocybin have
terrific potential for treating everything from addiction to Alzheimer’s to
end-of-life anxiety. Pharmaceutical companies
<https://www.wired.com/tag/pharmaceutical-industry/> have taken note. In
2020 the fledgling psychedelic industry was predicted to balloon to $6.9
billion by 2027—a year later, that estimate increased to over $10 billion.
In September 2020, Compass became the first company of its kind to trade on
a major stock exchange, debuting on the Nasdaq at an estimated value of
more than $1 billion.

So far, none of these companies has brought a psychedelic drug to market,
but the thinking is that, through what the clinical literature calls
a—“mystical-type experience”—a psychedelic trip that produces feelings of
joy, peace, interconnectedness, and transcendence—patients can confront the
root causes of various mental maladies. “I don’t want to use the word *cure*,
but psychedelics can offer long-term healing,” says Florian Brand, the
cofounder and CEO of a Berlin-based biotech incubator called Atai Life
Sciences, which invested in Compass Pathways. “We have put a lot of money
into actually exploring this hypothesis.”
The High-Stakes Race to Engineer New Psychedelic Drugs | WIRED
<https://www.wired.com/story/race-to-engineer-new-psychedelic-drugs/>
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