Terran Biosciences says it received United States patent approval for a series of novel psychedelic drugs designed to treat psychiatric and neurological disorders.
On Friday, the New York-based drug developer announced it received a notice of allowance from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for intellectual property rights on two new forms of psilocybin: psilocybin HCI and psilocybin edisylate.
The company describes them as the “world’s first new salts and polymorphs of psilocybin” and says the patents will include their methods of treating psychiatric and neurological disorders. The creator of the company says Terran has already produced quantities of the drugs in adherence with good manufacturing practices.
“With these allowances of our novel forms of psilocybin, and GMP manufacturing already completed, Terran is moving quickly toward the goal of providing patients with affordable and accessible psilocybin treatment options,” Dr. Sam Clark, Founder and CEO of the company, said.
Terran now plans to pursue U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for the psilocybin variations and says it could potentially have the drugs on the market within five years after receiving that authorization. The company currently supplies various researchers with psychedelics for clinical trials and other studies.
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‘World’s first’ orally active DMT prodrugs as well
Terran also received approval for what it describes as the “world’s first orally active prodrugs of dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and 5-MeO-DMT.”
Trace amounts of the psychedelic DMT can be found in all living organisms and in higher concentrations within certain plants. The 5-MeO-DMT compound is known for being found in the glands of the Colorado River Toad or Sonoran Desert Toad.
Those psychedelics are generally smoked, injected or require a monoamine oxidase inhibitor to be orally active (like the ceremonial ayahuasca brew used by Indigenous cultures in Latin America). However, the company has found a means of eliminating that requirement.
“With the allowance of our breakthroughs in the chemistry of DMT and 5-MeO-DMT, we hope to deliver oral versions of these therapeutics, which we believe will provide the best use profile for patients,” Clark said.
The company aims to obtain FDA approval for those drugs as well and says they are currently being examined in clinical trials.
The patent office also provided the company with a notice of allowance for its novel ibogaine derivative. The psychoactive compound ibogaine is found in Central Africa’s Tabernanthe iboga shrub and is renowned as an efficacious treatment for substance use disorders.
Terran Biosciences has one of the industry’s largest drug development programs and is experimenting with different varieties of psychedelics such as MDMA, LSD and 2CB for the treatment of different conditions.
Psychedelic therapies have been gaining mainstream acceptance in the U.S in recent days. A group of lawmakers from the Senate and House just agreed to allocate funding toward psychedelic studies in a new major defence bill passed last week.
Psilocybin, ibogaine and DMT were among the listed psychedelics to be used for the studies aimed at treating different disorders among Veterans and others.
rowan@mugglehead.com
