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[Colin Miller]

Hello, you're tuned into SNiPs, a reoccurring special segment from our ongoing series, Fractals: Life Science Conversations. Bracken is the professional services firm for life sciences and digital health organizations. Our intelligence ecosystem fulfils consulting, regulatory, marketing and analytics, an integrated and strategic approach.

And how do the patients accept the fact that they're going to have to be having an fMRI, which is a really claustrophobic measurement? You know, being an imaging guy, it's kind of, you know, I know a little bit about how those things go.

[Jim Gilligan]

I hate to give you credit, but you're bang on there, Colin, because we had for one of the studies, we actually had to make fMRI not mandatory. They were anxious, you know, they had anxiety to begin with. And so, we were fortunate in, we only had in our eating study, one person who just really, and they, God bless them, they tried, but they just really weren't able to do that.

And I give the therapist a tremendous amount of credit because they didn't just say, well, here it is. You know, they took them in, they showed them, they knew what to expect and they were there to support them. One of the other issues, which is the concern, especially people that are psychedelic naive, that they're going to have a bad trip.

So, what happens? I go in, I swallow this capsule, and then I'm in a room for six or eight hours that I can't control. And so, as you already know, but for the folks listening, Tryp’s come up with an alternative to the oral psilocybin.

What people don't know, but they'll know after this enlightening conversation in this podcast, is that psilocybin has no inherent biologic activity. What's in mushrooms doesn't have any biology. When you ingest it, your body converts it to a different molecule called psilocin.

And psilocin is what enters in the brain. And just to show I really am a pharmacologist; it binds to the 5HT2A receptors and that's what causes the psychedelic experience. And started thinking about, wow, if you have to have two therapists in a room for eight or 10 hours and treat one patient, that's pretty onerous.

And how do you commercialize that? The other issue with the oral is variability because it's converted in your body. If someone converts 25%, someone 100%, totally different blood levels, and then first pass metabolism to the liver.

So, what we came up with was an IV infusion of psilocin. And so there you don't do bolus because that would be quite traumatic to the patient. So, you administer over 15 or 20 minutes and then you slow down the infusion and you just hold it there.

And when they're finished their journey, you take it off. If they're having a profound effect, you put another quarter of the machine, you keep it going and let them finish. And it's almost like anesthesia, right?

You bring them in, you hold them there. When they're finished, you take them out. And the patient acceptability to that is huge because they're like, okay, so if I'm having a problem, you can turn it off, right?

Yeah. Whereas if once you swallow the capsule, all bets are off. And what the psychologists and psychiatrists have said to me, said, you know, Jim, there's another piece that we're just thinking about.

If someone's going in and they're really, really anxious and nervous and don't come in with a good mindset, they might not have a really good trip because they're going in not in a good position. Whereas if they're very comfortable and they trust us, the likely that they'll have a more fruitful journey is increased. I wouldn't have thought of that, but it does make sense.

So, I think this just shows again, given our collective experience, when we go into areas, I think we bring the wealth of our experience in drug development to not change the actual science, but bringing things that improve it. And the other thing it improves is how do you get a patent? You can't patent psilocybin.

It's in mushrooms, you know? And so, this approach not only provided a solution to what the problem was, but it also provided an IP opportunity. And just a quick aside.

So, I was chatting with the therapist at this conference in Denver, and there's certainly interest. 12,000 people showed up for it. And they go, Jim, we're talking about placebo.

They go, yeah, think about it. So, you're a therapist and you go in and you give them the placebo. He goes, it's tough enough sitting in a room for eight or 10 hours with someone who's having a journey.

He goes, you give someone a placebo. He goes, after a while, you've got to play Monopoly. I mean, what are you going to do?

You're sitting in the room for eight hours, you know? And they said, yeah, they said, the fact that you can get us out of there in an hour or two, we're all in. And so, you know, these are the practical things I think we bring to programs that it goes a little bit beyond the molecular biology or the pharmacology or things that we bring some perspective to help different organizations with a tremendous concept, transforming into something that could have commercial reality.

Think about when you go into VCs and the guy's sitting there with his calculator and says, so wait a second, two therapists, you're going to treat eight people a week? Yeah, I don't think so, you know? And so those are the things that I think we as Bracken with our breadth of expertise bring to these programs.

[Colin Miller]

Fractals: SNiPs is brought to you by Bracken and available wherever you get your podcasts. Visit us at thebrackengroup.com or reach out directly on LinkedIn. We'll be delighted to speak with you.

I’m Colin Miller wishing you sound business and good health. Thanks for listening.