 Hey guys, how you doing? This is your boy Rich from RichTVLive and you too can join the club at richpicksdaily.com where you can learn how to win and trade. Hi, how's everybody doing today? I'm your host Rich here on behalf of RichTVLive with our very special guest, the CEO of Filament Health, Benjamin Lightburn. How are you doing today, Benjamin? Doing great. Thanks, Rich. Can I call you Ben? Ben's fine, yep. Perfect. Well, Ben, I'm really excited to learn more about Filament Health. We've already been telling our community about your company, prepping them for this interview, prepping them for what could be a huge year for Filament Health. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved with Filament Health? Sure. Well, the way I got involved was by founding the company. So I've been involved right from the very beginning, right from signing on the dog line. But what drew me into psychedelics and drew me to start Filament Health was the fact that I spent my whole career producing botanical extracts, producing high value compounds from natural sources and also commercializing new technologies for getting those kinds of compounds out of those natural sources. So ingredients for cosmetics, ingredients for dietary supplements, ingredients for pharmaceutical products, these high value natural extracts are present in a lot of different products. A lot of different aisles of the grocery store and of the health food store have these kinds of natural extracts and I've really spent my whole career working on those kinds of things. When the psychedelics industry was kind of getting started a couple of years ago, one thing struck me as really odd was that even though all of these psychedelic substances like psilocybin, DMT, mescaline, they're all natural compounds. They were all discovered in nature. But over time, it's become commonplace to manufacture them synthetically in a lab. And while there's not anything necessarily wrong with that approach, we know that people prefer natural products in all aspects of their life. They don't take synthetic caffeine over a cup of coffee. They don't prefer artificial sweetener over natural sweetener. So why should psychedelics be any different? You only have to look to an industry like cannabis where people prefer natural products seven days out of seven. There is synthetic cannabinoids, but they're poorly tolerated. It is not very popular. So it was really that the combination of experience in natural extraction of natural substances, plus this, what we saw as a big opportunity to take advantage of the fact that no one was really pursuing the natural extraction of psychedelics. And that's sort of the founding story of Filament. That's pretty exciting. We're excited to see the company grow and evolve. And we've been really following the psychedelic sector for a couple of years now, and it's really starting to gain steam. Can you tell us what are some of your milestones that have set you set for this year for Filament Health and what shareholders can look forward to? So at the end of last year, we're really excited to announce our biggest milestone to date, which was getting clinical trial authorization by the FDA for the first ever clinical trial using natural psychedelic sources. This is a fact that's surprising to some. All clinical trials approved by the FDA up till now have been with synthetically prepared psychedelics. And we're very proud to announce that we came along and changed that, right? Now there's a clinical trial that's been approved that will use our naturally extracted botanical psilocybin and psilocin. So I think the most exciting, at least for now, updates to look forward to over the next coming year is results from this trial, right? So first ever natural clinical trial, we're looking for potential, potentially to be able to prove that people respond better to natural products. We're also looking to prove that people might respond better to directly administering psilocin rather than psilocybin. And that's something interesting too, because this is the first clinical trial to directly administer a compound called psilocin. And people may have heard of this compound because it's the active form of psilocybin. Psilocybin on its own, interestingly, is not actually active in the human body. It needs to convert into a related compound called psilocin. But because when manufactured synthetically, psilocin is very unstable, it's become commonplace again to manufacture psilocybin instead. This means that no clinical trials have actually looked at directly administering psilocin, which we think will have a number of benefits compared to psilocybin. So over the next year, we're going to look for results from this clinical trial, as well as getting our extracts into a phase two trial in the FDA. So we're going to look at the effects of our extracts, our naturally extracted psychedelics in patients with depression. So those those will be two big, big milestones over the next year. Wow, that's going to be exciting to watch you guys really hit those milestones. Ben, can you tell us about the management and the team at Filament Health, especially their past success in the public markets? Great question. Myself and many of our colleagues at Filament, we actually all work together at a botanical extraction company called MOTSA Innovation. There's a local Vancouver area biotech startup, which was founded in 2013. And then we actually sold that company in 2018. That gave us a lot of the experience in making extracts and building a company and making a facility, getting health Canada licenses, generating IP for patents, all that all that kind of stuff. That was a private company sold in the private in the private markets to a public company. So Filament is actually my very first experience with a public company. So that's why it became very important to add expertise to the team with demonstrated success in the in the public markets. Our CFO, Warren Duncan, is a reformed investment banker. He left a cushy job at Cormark Securities to come join us. So he obviously knows the ins and outs of Bay Street really well. And in fact, the chair of our board is a fellow called Greg Mills. He's the former head of RBC Global Equities. So that's just two examples of how I've been trying to surround myself with people much wiser in the ins and outs of the public market side. That's great. And that's what it takes to be successful. You need to surround yourself with people that are experts in their fields. And that's how you can really grow. So you're doing all the right things. Now the company recently announced that Health Canada has restored the access to restricted drugs via the special access program for healthcare practitioners. Can you tell us how and what this means for Filament Health? We're very excited by this announcement by Health Canada that, as you said, they've they've restored access to restricted drugs. So restricted drugs like psilocybin and psilocin are considered restricted drugs. In 2013, via an amendment, Health Canada actually removed access to restricted drugs via the special access program. So the special access program is a program that's designed to allow Canadians through their healthcare practitioners to request access to drugs on an individual basis that are not yet approved in Canada. So for example, these could be drugs that are approved in other jurisdictions or undergoing clinical trials here at home, but they're not yet approved as drugs. We have to be careful what we say because it's actually illegal to advertise drugs for sale through the special access program. But what I can say is that through the special access program, Canadians can request access to experimental therapies. And also Filament Health is one of a few Canadian companies to have in-house experimental experimental therapies in Health Canada approved clinical trials. So I think that's actually a very, very exciting development for for Canada as well, because we're seeing that Health Canada itself is responding to the evidence in support of psychedelics as well as the desire of Canadians. Many Canadians are already 100% convinced that psychedelics are safe and effective and that we should have more access to them. And so this is Health Canada, normally we don't give the government credit for listening and adapting, but this is Health Canada listening and adapting to new evidence and new desires as they come. Wow, that's a huge breakthrough. Now, if Filament Health were to compare itself to its competitors in this sector, what would you say sets you guys apart? I think the biggest thing that sets us apart amongst almost all psychedelics companies is the fact that our candidates are our drug candidates are in approved human clinical trials and they also enjoy significant amounts of IP protection. So if you look at the clinical trials that are currently being run, most of those are with relatively unprotected or completely unprotected molecules that are not patentable because they're found in nature. What companies are trying to do to get around that is invent new molecules which are patentable, but by and large those have a much longer drug development pathway ahead because there's no history of safety and efficacy and it's much harder to get into a human clinical trial. In addition to being a naturally focused company, we think that we found an elegant solution to this problem. Because we have a number of patented technologies employed in the manufacture of our drug candidates as well as the fact that our drug candidates are actually complex mixtures of all of the active metabolites of the psychedelic species. So our magic mushroom product contains not just psilocybin, but it contains psilocin, baocystin, all these other secondary metabolites that you've heard of. They're actually complex mixtures which are almost impossible to replicate for competitors, but they consist of these kind of classical molecules which have demonstrated safety and efficacy. So we can both get into human clinical trials quickly, but also enjoy significant IP protection. If you compare us to other naturally focused psychedelics company, I think the thing that sets us apart most is our level of advancement. We have these products in approved human clinical trials in the U.S. and Canada. Our facility is GMP. We have dealer's license. We're permitted to manufacture any controlled natural psychedelic substance. These are a lot of milestones that people are trying to achieve, but still have still have a ways to go. Congratulations on all your success so far, Ben. Can you go through the capital structure of filament health for our viewers in our community? We love to understand the fundamentals of the company. How much shares are on, you know, issue an outstanding? How many shares are held by insiders? Can you also explain a little bit about your plan in 2022 on how you plan to attract more institutional as well as retail investors? Great question. The company enjoys a significant degree of insider ownership. Insiders and management own about 65% of all the outstanding shares. Wow. As we were getting started over the last couple of years, the natural story, frankly, did not resonate with an institutional investor audience. They were basically didn't think that the whole thesis of the company is that natural psychedelics are possible. That's the thing that we're trying to prove and I think we've done a pretty good job of proving up till now, but that when we got started was not very clear to very many people, especially the institutional audience. On the other hand, the kind of retail audience, our extended networks, our friends and family, the appetite for those types of people to invest was very large. Because of that, by the time we went public, we have almost no institutional shareholders in our investor base and almost 100% retail investors. But of course, now that we've actually proven that it is possible to get natural psychedelic drug candidates into FDA approved clinical trials, that it's possible to get IP, we have our first patents got issued over the summertime, that it's possible for natural to be GMP, all these question marks that the more institutional audience had a year or two ago have been answered, now we are looking back at the institutionals. What I will say is now that we're listed in the US and we're developing relationships with US investment bankers, their analysts and their investors. I think in the next couple of months, there's some things being worked on that wouldn't be surprising to see some institutional participation in our stock. That's great. Now here at RichDB Live, we'd love to interview companies to find companies that are undervalued, underappreciated, underexposed. If there was one thing you would want investors to know about filament health today, what would that be? I would say, well, I mean, all those things you said I think do apply to us. I think the one thing that separates us from a much larger market cap is simply just awareness. I would encourage investors to look at all that we've achieved. The number of drug candidates that we have in approved clinical trials issued patents, in-house manufacturing capabilities, revenue. We announced a revenue-generating deal a couple of months ago whereby we can actually license our drug candidates to other psychedelic companies who are more than happy to pay us for the pleasure of using them in their clinical trials. I really think operationally, we have a lot to be proud of. I encourage people to do their due diligence and compare what we have and how quickly we've achieved it compared to others and use that to extrapolate into the future and who's going to be the successful horse to bet on. We've got investors from all over the world that will see this video and this interview. What is the best way for those investors to get in touch with the company if they have any questions or if they just like to learn more about filament health? They're welcome to send us an email hello at filament.health. Anytime you'll get answered by our friendly agent standing by 24-7 and definitely sign up for the mailing list on our website. We send out a lot of really cool information about magic mushrooms, pictures of different mushrooms in various stages of maturity, a lot of interesting things in our mailing list. Either directly by email or sign up for our mailing list are the two good ways. Fantastic. Thank you so much today for your time today. The CEO of filament health, Benjamin Lightburn. I must remind everyone that Rich TV Live is strictly for information and education purposes. Please do your due diligence, do your research before you invest in anything we talk about or discuss here on Rich TV Live. In saying that, I do believe this is a very fast growing sector and a company that is very undervalued, underappreciated, under-exposed. Put them on your radar, put them on your watch list, filament health. You can see the symbol here in Canada, FH, symbol in America, FLHLF. Thank you for joining us today, Ben, and we wish you all the best of luck in 2022. Thanks, Rich. Looking forward to coming back on the show in the next couple months. Yeah, we'd love to invite you back. For those of you guys that are watching, if you're not winning, you're probably not watching. We bring you the winners, and we bring them to you first. Let's have a great 2022. Let's start off with a bang. Thank you for watching, everybody. This is your boy, Rich from Rich TV Live with Benjamin Lightburn, the CEO of filament health, saying, have a nice day. We'll see you soon.