You might think of the 1960s or the Woodstock Festival when we talk about psychedelics.
But in recent years, these substances made their way back into public conversation because
of their immense potential in curing some of the world’s most challenging mental health disorders.
It's like electrocuting your brain.
In a way, an expanded state of consciousness.
Psychedelic healthcare is a very exciting area because it’s really this apex of drugs,
clinics and experimental treatments.
According to a market research report, the psychedelic therapy market was valued at 3.6 billion dollars in 2021.
That figure is expected to more than double by 2028, as interest from the medical community
and investors grows.
But it’s also possible that the industry will face some of the regulatory hurdles and
boom and bust cycles the legal cannabis market has seen.
A team of scientists from Imperial University scan the brains of volunteers while the patients
are under the influence of these drugs.
Dr David Erritzoe is the clinical director of the university’s Centre for Psychedelic Research.
We have different tools.
We have MRI, magnetic imaging, we have more molecular.
Part of what we have been doing at Imperial, is doing some of the first work with these
techniques during a psychedelic experience.
In this room, the Imperial team administer their treatments.
In 2021, they began a new trial comparing psilocybin therapy with a conventional antidepressant
drug in patients with depression.
Psilocybin is the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms.
One is a profound single administration of a drug that puts you in a psychedelic space.
So, an altered state of consciousness, expanded state.
The control or comparison was a daily administration of a conventional antidepressant for six weeks.
And what did the research tell you?
What was the finding?
Overall, the study favored, in this study, the psilocybin condition, so the people who
were in that side of the study, that arm, they did better on most of the outcomes.
Around one in eight people worldwide, or one billion people, suffer from a mental health disorder.
In addition to the hardship experienced by patients, this also has a cost that can be measured.
The OECD estimates that the economic burden of mental illness can be around 4% of a country’s GDP.
Global sales of antidepressant drugs are expected to exceed 20 billion dollars by 2030.
Investors are betting that psychedelic therapies have the potential to grab a share of that enormous market.
Clara Burtenshaw is a partner at Neo Kuma Ventures, the largest European venture capital
fund investing in psychedelic companies such as Atai Life Sciences and Compass Pathways.
The more I researched into it, the more I saw that there was this really interesting
opportunity to create a better class of drug to treat people.
And really a breakthrough in psychiatric drug development research, something we really
haven't seen in the last 50 years.
The reason why it's so hyped is that the results look very strong and good, even for a range of conditions.
Combined with the fact that not much has happened in conventional pharma development
in mental health for decades.
Here in the United Kingdom, poor mental health costs almost 120 billion pounds annually.
This is around five per cent of the country’s economic output.
72% of the cost is due to lost productivity of people living with mental health conditions
and their personal caregivers.
Pandora Morris is a former lawyer and a mental health activist who has tried numerous treatments
to ease her debilitating OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder).
Her podcast, Hurt to Healing, aims to raise awareness on mental health issues.
I was very lucky.
I could afford to go and have private treatment.
There are so many people out there who don't have those resources.
And that's my mission is to try and support those people.
44% of mental health service providers in England reported being unable to meet current
demands for inpatient services.
This rises to 81% for services targeting young people.
After struggling to recover with conventional methods in the UK, Pandora decided to travel
abroad to a psychedelic retreat where she was given four milligrams of psilocybin.
You are almost like grieving, what you haven't processed emotionally.
Then that trauma and the tears wore off.
And then I went into your typical psychedelic state, which was, I mean, extraordinary.
Like this kaleidoscopic kind of display of fireworks, and fields, and being in the ocean.
And it’s not a cure.
But it’s certainly something that just helps with momentum.
Due to their mind-bending qualities, substances like psilocybin, ketamine, LSD and MDMA remain
illegal in most parts of the world.
But after decades of demonization, these drugs have undergone a public image shift.
There are countless articles, documentaries, TED Talks and some very high-profile advocates.
But it is not all smooth sailing for this emerging industry.
Public interest is there.
The science took off.
There are some very promising results from various studies.
But stocks seem to be tumbling.
Why do you think that is?
Large part of the problem is that there was this huge rush to list very early
on Canadian stock exchanges, in a very benign equities market.
Companies now waiting to hit those clinical inflection points.
It's not a quick win, it's not a quick return.
But for the psychedelic healthcare investor, now is a very good time, because you've got
some companies with excellent assets, trading at very depressed values.
Most psychedelic healthcare companies use similar substances, so it is unclear how they
are going to differentiate their treatments and establish market share.
As a result, there is a fierce race to own patents.
Some of the biggest players in the market have been assertive with their applications
to gain an advantage over their competitors.
The problem?
People have been using these substances for centuries.
The field of psychedelic medicine is at its early stages.
It's an emerging field and a lot of the work being done is being done at universities and at small companies.
And the presence of overly broad granted patents threatens that development.
David Casimir is a patent attorney and the founder of Porta Sophia, an online database
aiming to track and assist with blocking these so-called “bad patents.”
The goal of this is essentially to protect the public domain.
To ensure that those things that have already been done historically can continue to be
done without interference of lawsuits.
One case which attracted David’s attention saw a mental health care company attempt to
patent the use of psilocybin to treat depression.
When you look at their patent applications, they purport to have invented a new chemical
form of the drug psilocybin but their patent applications were filed initially much more broadly.
They were essentially covering all forms of psilocybin.
Following David’s objection, the company narrowed their U.S. patent claims.
But backers of the larger players in the space say there’s a need for intellectual property
they invest in to be protected.
The for-profit sector would not put the millions required into developing those drugs,
unless there was a way to recoup that with some profits.
So, patents enable them to do that.
People who are recreationally or medicinally taking mushrooms in a field, no one is going to go after that.
It will require industry to come in and take over some of the development.
And hopefully they will listen to a lot of the wisdom, not just from academia, but also
from, you know, cultures where people have a lot of wisdom about these treatment models.
If the science works, I’m confident that we will see products on the market.
If these drugs work, it will be world changing.
And so, everyone who is in the field, I would encourage to be very diligent and do what they can to help.