Il­lic­it drugs are mak­ing some big ad­vances in R&D, and Thiel part­ners at ATAI get a $43M bankroll to fu­el dri­ve on mag­ic mush­rooms, Spe­cial K

Just a few weeks af­ter the FDA of­fered phar­ma gi­ant J&J an ap­proval for its nose spray ver­sion of the par­ty drug Spe­cial K, flag­ging its will­ing­ness to low­er the gold stan­dard on drug de­vel­op­ment for a chance at adding a new ap­proach to de­pres­sion, a glob­al biotech start­up in­volved in bring­ing psy­che­del­ic med­i­cine in from the fringe just raised $43 mil­lion to build their pipeline.

ATAI Life Sci­ences is in the spot­light this morn­ing with their new round, of­fer­ing an­oth­er ex­am­ple of how some il­lic­it drugs are en­ter­ing the clin­i­cal spot­light for treat­ing psy­chi­atric con­di­tions. 

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