FSD Pharma Inc. HUGE HUGE, a life sciences holding company looking at cannabinoid and psychedelic-based medicines, announced it is entering a definitive agreement to acquire Lucid Psycheceuticals Inc.
Lucid is a psychedelic pharmaceutical company focused on developing therapies to treat neurodegenerative diseases and mental health disorders.
The all-stock transaction will include 4.5 million Class B subordinate voting shares of FSD Pharma, valued at approximately $9 million.
As part of the deal, Lucid’s co-founder and CEO, Dr. Lakshmi Kotra, will lead FSD Pharma’s drug development pipeline in psychedelics and medical cannabis.
“The acquisition of a distinctive company like Lucid illustrates FSD Pharma’s vision to build a portfolio of biotechnology assets on a new frontier of medicine that hold the potential to treat mental health disorders and neurodegenerative diseases in a new way,” said Anthony Durkacz, Interim CEO of FSD Pharma.
Durkacz said that Lucid has successfully developed a strong pipeline of novel therapeutic compounds, supported by IP in order to advance to future clinical trials.
“We are confident that the experience the Lucid leadership team brings will allow us to immediately start the process towards clinical trials to further advance these promising therapies,” he added.
Lucid refers to itself as a psychedelics-inspired company focusing on “total brain health.” For this goal, the company is developing a pipeline of drugs focusing on mental health disorders like major depression and neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis.
Lucid has exclusive worldwide licensing rights from the University Health Network in Canada, to a patent-protected family of new chemical entities. From this IP, the company derived its lead therapeutic candidate for neurodegenerative disorders, called Lucid-21-302, currently undergoing scale-up processing and IND-enabling studies.
The company’s pipeline also includes Lucid-201, a psychedelic drug candidate targeting mental health disorders.
Photo: Arek Socha at Pixabay.
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