Psy­che­del­ic re­search gains mo­men­tum, as ear­ly tri­al sug­gests mi­cro-dos­ing LSD is safe

Psy­che­delics have been long ne­glect­ed as the sub­ject of vig­or­ous sci­en­tif­ic re­search af­ter gov­ern­ments brand­ed them as il­le­gal he­do­nis­tic com­pounds with no ther­a­peu­tic po­ten­tial. But in re­cent years, de­spite tricky reg­u­la­tions, a resur­gence of in­ter­est from re­searchers has cul­mi­nat­ed in an FDA ap­proved ke­t­a­mine-de­rived de­pres­sion treat­ment, clin­i­cal tri­als test­ing the po­ten­tial of psilo­cy­bin in ‘mag­ic mush­rooms,’ and the set­ting up of a psy­che­del­ic re­search cen­ter at Johns Hop­kins.

The col­or­less, odor­less and taste­less drug, ly­ser­gic acid di­ethy­lamide (LSD) — or acid, as it is fond­ly known — is part of this re­search re­nais­sance. On Wednes­day, a small pri­vate­ly held com­pa­ny — Eleu­sis Ben­e­fit Cor­po­ra­tion — un­veiled da­ta from an ear­ly study in healthy old­er vol­un­teers that test­ed its mi­cro-dos­ing ap­proach with LSD. And if it all goes ac­cord­ing to plan — nev­er a sure thing in biotech — they’ve got plans to tar­get Alzheimer’s with the ap­proach.

Neilo­u­far Fam­i­ly

In the study, 48 vol­un­teers (mean age = 62.9 years) re­ceived ei­ther 5 μg, 10 μg, or 20 μg of LSD, or place­bo  — ad­min­is­tered in wa­ter — every four days in six ses­sions. Over­all, the LSD was well tol­er­at­ed, and the fre­quen­cy of ad­verse events was no high­er than the place­bo, the com­pa­ny said, while claim­ing this is the first ever pub­li­ca­tion of clin­i­cal study da­ta on mi­cro-dosed LSD.

PK da­ta showed that the half-life of the LSD dos­es was short. “So at 12 hours post-dose, there was no drug in the blood at any of the dos­es,” Neilo­u­far Fam­i­ly, the tri­al’s lead in­ves­ti­ga­tor, told End­points News. “And there al­so wasn’t any drug in the blood at base­line on the sixth dose.”

The da­ta sup­port fur­ther clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of LSD, whose psy­choac­tiv­i­ty is un­der­stood to be me­di­at­ed pri­mar­i­ly through the 5-HT2A re­cep­tor, Eleu­sis said. The com­pa­ny even plans to de­vel­op the drug to treat and pre­vent Alzheimer’s dis­ease, a field lit­tered with fail­ure and a pauci­ty of promis­ing ther­a­peu­tics in the late-stage pipeline.

But the brim­ming en­thu­si­asm comes with a healthy dose of skep­ti­cism. Crit­ics wor­ry that the bur­geon­ing psy­che­del­ic re­search could in­cen­tivize un­bri­dled use of non-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ver­sions of these drugs and that clin­i­cal tri­al da­ta could be cloud­ed by the fact that place­bo-con­trolled stud­ies are not nec­es­sar­i­ly dou­ble-blind­ed, be­cause it is far too easy to de­ter­mine which group of pa­tients have been giv­en a place­bo.

“The one thing that we did ex­pect — but is still re­mark­able — is the high place­bo re­sponse,” Fam­i­ly said. “Peo­ple were re­port­ing per­cep­tions of psy­choac­tive ef­fects, when lat­er on we found out they were on place­bo…but in any case, any per­cep­tions of psy­choac­tive ef­fects were very mild and they sub­sided by the end of the day, both in the ac­tive dose groups and the place­bo groups.”

Eleu­sis has a plan to hedge its Alzheimer’s bet, and to deal with the pesky prob­lem of di­ver­sion.

Be­fore div­ing in­to a Phase II ef­fi­ca­cy study in Alzheimer’s, the com­pa­ny is plan­ning an ear­ly-stage study with a com­pound — a “not-so-psy­che­del­ic” psy­che­del­ic sero­tonin 5-HT2A ag­o­nist — in oph­thal­mol­o­gy. At the mo­ment, the eye drug is at the pre­clin­i­cal stage of de­vel­op­ment.

Shlo­mi Raz

The Phase I tri­al, which is ex­pect­ed to kick off in ear­ly 2021, will pro­vide a key mech­a­nis­tic in­sight in­to how psy­che­delics could pre­vent neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion as­so­ci­at­ed with in­flam­ma­tion, Eleu­sis chief Shlo­mi Raz told End­points.

“The eye is a win­dow to the soul but al­so to the brain,” he said.”The reti­na, in par­tic­u­lar, gives us a very neat way of as­sess­ing how psy­che­delics could po­ten­tial­ly man­age neu­ro­pro­tec­tion, neu­roin­flam­ma­tion and pro­vides us a cost-ef­fec­tive proof-of-con­cept be­fore go­ing in­to — by all mea­sures —what seems to be the most ex­pen­sive type of clin­i­cal tri­al around, which is in Alzheimer’s dis­ease.”

The hope is to de­vel­op an LSD com­pound for ther­a­peu­tic use that can be used in the out­pa­tient set­ting, but psy­choac­tiv­i­ty is a risk that must be mon­i­tored, he said. The com­pa­ny says it is de­vel­op­ing a non­in­va­sive safe­ty mon­i­tor­ing tech­nol­o­gy that will be used in its clin­i­cal tri­als, and if the com­pound is ap­proved, for pa­tient use.

“In all cas­es, there’s a cal­cu­lus of safe­ty, ver­sus un­met need, and clin­i­cal util­i­ty,” he said.  “I think in the case of Alzheimer’s dis­ease, should we demon­strate that LSD in fact, is ef­fec­tive in slow­ing or halt­ing the pro­gres­sion of the dis­ease, then I think that there’s a clear jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for tak­ing that risk.”

Image courtesy of The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

Pro­tect­ing the glob­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem – what’s at stake?

We are living in a new era of healthcare that is rapidly advancing progress impacting patient outcomes and experiences. We’ve seen a remarkable pace of transformational innovation, applied research, and advanced clinical development over the last decade.

Despite this tremendous progress, there is much more work to be done, and patients are counting on us – now more than ever – to continue that momentum. At the heart of our industry is a focus on developing and delivering medicines for some of the world’s most challenging diseases, including those that have few or no effective treatments today.

Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment calls mem­ber states to ac­tion on an­timi­cro­bial re­sis­tance

Members of the European Parliament have called on EU countries to develop national action plans against antimicrobial resistance (AMR), calling it a top-three priority health threat.

Parliament on Thursday announced recommendations for the fight against AMR, including national action plans that must be updated at least every two years, an EU-level database tracking AMR and antimicrobial use and increased partnership between the pharma industry, patient groups and academia.

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Andrey Zarur, GreenLight Biosciences CEO

Green­Light Bio­sciences se­cures merg­er as it looks to go pri­vate

GreenLight Bioscience, the developer and manufacturer of RNA vaccines and therapeutics, is set to be acquired.

The company announced earlier this week that it would be acquired by a group of buyers led by Fall Line Capital in a cash deal valuing GreenLight at around $45.5 million. According to a release, Fall Line and the group agreed to acquire all of the shares of the company for $0.30 per share. The deal is expected to close sometime in the third quarter of this year.

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Roche plans to di­vest from lega­cy Genen­tech man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Cal­i­for­nia

Roche is planning to make some changes to its subsidiary’s manufacturing network in California.

The Swiss pharma announced Wednesday that it plans to divest from Genentech’s manufacturing facility in Vacaville, CA, around 58 miles northeast of San Francisco. According to a statement from Roche, the move is part of a “broader strategy” to bring its manufacturing capabilities in line with its future pipeline. Roche is starting the process of finding a buyer for the site but has not named any candidates yet.

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FDA lifts hold on Mol­e­c­u­lar Tem­plates’ mul­ti­ple myelo­ma tri­al af­ter less than two months

The FDA has lifted a partial clinical hold on Molecular Templates’ early-stage trial for a multiple myeloma drug, the biotech company announced Thursday morning.

Regulators had put the trial on partial hold in early April, pausing patient enrollment, following two adverse heart-related events in patients who received the highest dose of Molecular Templates’ treatment MT-0169 last year. One patient had asymptomatic grade 2 myocarditis, or heart muscle inflammation, while the other had a grade 3 cardiomyopathy. Both recovered within two months.

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Roger Perlmutter, Eikon Therapeutics CEO

Roger Perl­mut­ter builds Eikon's pipeline with deal-mak­ing flur­ry, rais­ing $106M more

Eikon Therapeutics announced three business development deals on Thursday, effectively dropping in a pipeline of cancer drugs alongside more than $100 million in fresh funding.

The Hayward, CA-based company has become one of biotech’s richest startups since its 2019 founding, having raised nearly $775 million. It’s developing a massive, automated research approach built around Nobel Prize-winning microscope science to peer inside cells and watch proteins in action. After its Series B last year, PitchBook reported a $3.02 billion valuation. And while CEO Roger Perlmutter declined to comment on that figure, he said its first tranche of nearly $106 million in Series C funding is a “meaningful step-up to our Series B valuation.”

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Peter van de Sande, Synaffix CEO

Lon­za shells out $107M cash to snap up Synaf­fix and its ADC plat­form

After lining up a string of partnerships over the years, Dutch antibody-drug conjugate specialist Synaffix has found a new home: Lonza, the contract development and manufacturing giant.

Lonza is paying about $107 million (€100 million) in cash to acquire Synaffix, with up to $64 million (€60 million) in “additional performance-based consideration” on the table. Synaffix’s ADC tech platform will now become part of Lonza’s offering for biopharma clients, lending its bioconjugate technologies to not just ADCs but also targeted gene therapy, immune cell engagers and other applications.

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Who's con­fi­dent­ly in­vest­ing in biotech star­tups dur­ing these tense days? We've got some an­swers

We’ve got a changeup to our event schedule in Boston next week, where we’ll be doing a mix of live/streaming events at our base at The Seaport Hotel as part of a two-day lineup of webinars, virtual firesides and a cocktail hour Q&A with a veteran of the biotech financing scene.

The 9:30-10:30 am ET live slot on Tuesday, June 6, will now feature a panel conversation on the current state of affairs for VC investing in biotech, focusing on what startups are getting cash — and how. Alaa Halawa, head of US ventures at Mubadala, is confirmed, along with Brian Goodman at MPM and Geoff von Maltzahn, a general partner at Moderna-buoyed Flagship. I have a couple of other invites out and will let you know how that plays out.

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As­traZeneca gives up on late-stage IL-23 drug due to tri­al de­lays, com­pet­i­tive land­scape

AstraZeneca is shelving an IL-23 antibody that’s been through a winding journey around pharma — including stops at Amgen and Allergan — and putting an end to Phase II and III trials testing the drug for inflammatory bowel disease.

“The decision to discontinue brazikumab’s IBD development follows a recent review of brazikumab’s development timeline and the context of a competitive landscape that has continued to evolve,” a press release reads.

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