This Firm Bets On Non-Hallucinogenic Psychedelics, Files Claims For International IP Protection

Numerous biopharma companies are working on enhancing first-generation or “classical” psychedelics. They're tuning down the side effects, and protecting their findings along the way.

Next-gen drugs developer Mindset Pharma Inc. MSSTF has now filed two new international patent applications to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) covering its “Family 6” non-hallucinogenic, non-tryptamine compounds. 

The applications cover a range of compounds, including some of the company’s early tryptamines, but also newer, later-stage and non-tryptamine compounds.

Mindset’s current compounds under study have serotonin 5HT2A activity, but without producing classical head-twitch responses. This suggests they are non-hallucinogenic.

Some of the compounds might be “functionally more potent than psilocybin and 5-MeO-DMT as 5-HT2A agonists," CEO James Lanthier said.

The company remains focused on what Mindset CSO Joseph Araujo calls “functional output,” linked to endophenotypes (or “biomarkers”) of neuropsychiatric or neurodegenerative diseases. That would mean specifically looking at, for instance, attention or motivation, to try and improve those clusters of symptoms.

“And that’s the approach that we intend to move forward with with our non-hallucinogenic compounds. So essentially our compounds, which include tryptamines and non-tryptamines, show 5HT2A activity without the hallucinogenic behavioral profile,” he explained.

Based on current positive preclinical in vitro and in vivo data, the new patents would provide Mindset with preliminary freedom to operate for all claimed drug candidates from that compound family.

Mindset’s Commercial Strategy

Since its inception, Mindset has been filing patents covering “multiple scaffolds” of compounds related to psilocybin and other tryptamines, Araujo sas. Yet, the company has been getting further away from that “backbone-tryptamine structure” to cover newer and non-tryptamine compounds.

As for the future development of these compounds, Lanthier says the plan is to continue to apply Mindset’s proven development model.

“We’ll do the hard, early scientific work, the medicinal chemistry, behavioral pharmacology, to identify exciting potential leads, and develop them to a point where they need the expertise and capital of bigger, more clinically-focused pharma," he said.

So far, it has been “a really successful model for the company."

In addition to positive preclinical outcomes, Lanthier says the company believes they might potentially treat “a substantially wider patient population,” including children or geriatric patients.

Photo by Sam Moghadam Khamseh on Unsplash.