Biomind Labs completes psychedelic for depression, anxiety in patients with Alzheimer's

Biomind Labs has completed the development of a novel sublingual formulation to be used in a phase 2 trial for a psychedelic-based candidate for the treatment of depression and anxiety in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

According to a company press release, Biomind is currently developing novel pharmaceutical formulations of psychedelic molecules 5-Metoxi-N, N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT) and mescaline for the treatment of a wide range of therapeutic indications.

“Our scientific team has completed the challenging development of our proprietary sublingual formulation containing 5-MeO-DMT and the production of the first batch to be used in the phase 2 trial,” Biomind CEO Alejandro Antalich said in the release. “We are extremely excited about our novel drug candidate which may allow us to address a new line of development to attenuate depression and anxiety states in patients with Alzheimer’s-type cognitive impairment.”

According to Paola Díaz Dellavalle, PhD, chief scientific officer at Biomind Labs, the main objective when developing the psychedelic formulation was that it would be convenient, inexpensive and pain free.

“In the case of tryptamines, such as 5-MeO-DMT, it becomes neurochemically inactive when administered orally, since it is degraded by monoamine oxidase enzymes present in the gastrointestinal tract, preventing its absorption to the circulatory system and the central nervous system,” Dellavalle said in the release. “For the oral route of administration, adding monoamine oxidase inhibitors to protect 5-MeO-DMT from the first pass-metabolism, becomes critical. This factor considerably increases the complexity of the formulation, which maximizes the achievement.”