 for the last decade, for Rolling Stone advice, and a number of other publications, and more recently we founded Double Blind, which is a magazine that's on both shelves across the country, and also you can find us online. And we have our esteemed panelist here, Jay Pleckham, who is a mycologist. We have Leonard LaRaire, who is the founder of Back of the Arts, Algae Sciences, and then Tony Molesky, also a mycologist for that same. Company. Before we dive in and talk about the challenges to scaling the production of sills, and I just want to give a little bit of context. I don't know how much everybody knows. I think there's a wide variety of familiarity with the psychedelic space in this room. In May, excuse me, in November of 2018, Compass Pathways, which is a pharmaceutical company based on the UK, was granted breakthrough therapy status for psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. And then in November of this year, USONA, which is a non-profit pharmaceutical company based here in the United States, was also granted breakthrough therapy status by the FDA for psilocybin for major depressive disorder, which is affecting 6.7% of Americans. So it's a massive mental health epidemic that we're facing with depression. And so breakthrough therapy status basically means we are designating this as a breakthrough therapy because there are no other medicines that are effectively treating this condition right now. Treatment-resistant, you all know means, you know, we've tried, it was available, it hasn't worked. There's more than 100 million people around the globe with treatment-resistant depression. So alongside sort of all of the excitement around psilocybin following in the footsteps of cannabis, there has been the rise of the grassroots movement to decriminalize psilocybin at the local level. So last year in May, the county of Denver decriminalized psilocybin, which it's not legalization, it basically means it's a low enforcement priority for law enforcement in the city. And then less than a month later, Oakland decriminalized all naturally occurring psychedelics. So that includes psilocybin, peyote, ayahuasca, San Pedro, anything that comes from the earth, so not LSD or NDMA or any other synthetic derivative of the psychedelic. Now there's more than 100 cities and counties across the United States that are trying to decriminalize naturally occurring psychedelics. So there is a massive movement, it is spreading like wildfire and it's really two things are happening at the same time. We have cities and counties that are trying to decriminalize psychedelics at the local level. And the reason why this has implications for investors and people who are interested in getting into this space is because a lot of the people who are running these initiatives are doing so in the hopes that people are going to be empowered to grow psilocybin and other naturally occurring psychedelics basically in their homes, which means that they won't have to dead it as an FDA-approved dedication. And then the federal research, which is for us, and hi Andrew! Anyway, so there's a little bit of context for you and now we'll just dive into our panel. I'd like to start with what you talked to us. Just give us a little bit of context as to what you're doing and what the implications are for the psychedelics case. What we talked about are the real nuts and bolts. It took Amgen 15 years before they could get a reasonable drug and start the whole antibody therapeutics. And so what we're really talking about is how do you get a safe, sustainable CGNP, good laboratory practice supply of not only psilocybin, but all the empty agents onto the market. We're not only talking here about psilocybin, we're also talking about a whole range of products which are derived from peptide, derived from even raw epithelium. And we think we can do it because we do it already. But it's a long and hard and tough road. It's also a road which requires a huge amount of investment. We just installed now our own brand new HPLC. We have CMS, which is mass spectrometry. And what we basically work on is one thing, sustainable celibate agriculture. In other words, there's no way on this planet that regulators are going to approve a drug which has grown on shit with all respect. We've got to move on. We're not into genetic modification. We're into basically helping nature do things better. And we've done that already. Our main product is this, which is an extract of spirulina. It's called pica cyanide. Has anybody heard of it? No? Okay. Yep. Okay, good. You can get some for me afterwards. Okay, this is a potent antioxidant. And it comes from a blue-green algae. And we're the first in the world to basically make this in a non-polluting, sustainable way. And it goes basically into the market as a food coloring. But we've been testing it quite extensively for depression, believe it or not, in animal standards. And we found that it wasn't an anti-depressant, but we learned a lot about how to do animal studies. And all our extracts, which we're doing now, which we may be doing or may not be doing, in the epigenetics phase, will go through a similar development process of animal testing, which is vitally important. We can ever distinguish between what is it and why do these things do what they do. So, number one, we are basically cellular agriculture specialists. We have one of the largest facilities of robotic cell culture in the world, but nobody knows about it. Because our work is basically around algae extracts using these as lightages to improve growth. And now, more increasingly, what we found is that the, and we can't obviously talk about this in great detail, is that it is possible to increase the levels of actives in things like wasabi, which, and perhaps, perhaps hallucinogenic mushrooms, in cell culture to a level where it makes it economically viable, never to grow a mushroom again, never to have a mushroom growing on manure, tar-down, horseshed, whatever it is, again. And that's the future of this. So, basically, that's our work. I won't go into too much detail. And I have on either side of me our principal, my colleagues, who basically are the ones that pushed, that opened my eyes to this whole area and pushed me so hard in the direction of, we've got to be able to do this in a way that we can get universal access to what are definitely active molecules that work. And then, I think we're amongst the converted, but it should be easy to convert everybody else, other than my guys. Yeah, Tony, or Jay, will you talk to us a little bit about, you know, what is the silicide that people are using now in the trials at NYU and Hopkins and others, and how, what you're doing, different? The difference with what they're doing, we're just our basic principles of trying to make the cleanest possible cultures of active compounds. And I'm not sure exactly what John Hopkins or what their actual tests, what they're getting to attest them with. I'm not familiar with that, but we're trying to fill that food chain, whereas I know for a fact that there's multiple compounds that are lost in the durianic process, and multiple compounds that just aren't explored, like THCV. There's all these compounds that they're now finding out that complete what really makes THC work in the canvas. And we're trying to get all of those compounds brought out and isolated and figured out what they're worth so that then they can really understand. Is it silicin or is it something else? I'm sorry, is it silicin or is it something else that they're trying, that is causing this? What are the results from, truly? Is it the silicin in the mushroom? Is there other compounds in the mushroom that the results are coming from? And we are trying to dissect all of that and figure it out so that we know what points these are on this HDLC issue, what these points really truly mean to the mind and to the soul. And that's our goal is to have that laid out like a diagram. Yeah, that's very interesting. For those of you who are in the cannabis space, you're familiar with the fact that there's this movement right now to isolate the turkeys and the cannabinoids to figure out exactly what combinations and what things work for what people and what conditions. There's more than 200 mushrooms that have silicin and 200 strains. So Jay, can you talk to me a little bit about all the different kinds of mushrooms with silicin and how your work always can help you navigate that? So we spent the past couple years collecting various strains of mushrooms that are silicin produced in the mushroom. Of some of those strains, a couple produced higher ratio of silicin to silicide them. And the silicin is the part that ends up being oxidized and degraded during the drying process. And we're, you know, looking for all these different varieties of mushrooms, we're looking for the mushrooms that produce higher ratios of silicin and then growing it in a way that it can be processed without degrading any of those aspects. I'm just going to turn to my right here, Lauren, who is running a little bit late. She just joined us. She's a partner at Pillar of P.C. And so a lot of people are looking at silicides and psychedelics and they're saying, it's falling in the footsteps of cannabis and, oh gosh, I got to get in right now. What are your thoughts? Is it too soon? Are people right on time? And what kinds of lessons do people learn from the cannabis investment landscape as they're entering into the psychedelic space? Do I call it as being like, hey, I'm filling in for a partner of mine who is 12 years old, unfortunately, to be here today? I have a lot of cannabis law and we're just starting off to get into this. And it is similar in a lot of ways and different in a lot of ways. But the most important thing to think about whenever you're investing is that this is a long-term play. Even if you're in for the right reasons, you're not going to get rich today. And I think that that was a big problem that the cannabis industry had in capitalizing was presented as green rush. And if anyone knows anything about investing in cannabis, it's going to probably be green rush, especially the operators. But there are a lot of similarities and dissimilaries. As everyone probably knows, you're in full cannabis and about $22.00 is still one of us. That means according to under the crucial Substances Act, they have no mental purpose to be known as doctor. They can't be safely, you know that's not true, and they're highly susceptible to abuse, you know that's not true. So both cannabis and psychedelics really have no place in Seattle-on, but they are classified in Seattle-on. Now, the reasons for that classification for those of you who can know about the legalization of cannabis is really rooted in immigration animosity. We know that the controlled Substances Act is fostered through the NICS administration in an effort to suppress political rights, minorities and through speech rights to those who contested the current NICS administration, and the war on the NICS. So we have mass incarceration, we have mass arrests, we have issues in cannabis that we don't have in the psychedelic universe. So the legalization efforts in cannabis, independent medical cannabis are rooted in social justice reform, and the mass incarceration, you know, fixing the failed foreign drugs and the vital consequences associated with anyone who is improperly arrested in connection with the failed foreign drugs. The legalization of mushrooms and of psychedelics is rooted really in connection to nature. And if anyone takes a look at, you know, for example, the legalization of professions and legalization, the decriminalization measure passed and opened. It reads sort of like a groovy guide to getting high, and it talks a lot about the spiritual connection with the planet Earth, and people having the freedom to alter their minds, and that's really not something the government should be able to jail people for. So for reasons, the policies underlying the legalization of both substances are similar and dissimilar in various respects. But we are nonetheless stepping into a more billion-dollar demand when we think about the medical potential for mushrooms covering large spots of the population, similarly as you would with many of the medical conditions that medical cannabis addresses. Will you talk to me a little bit about your relationship with King's College London? We can't really talk much, but as I mentioned, the development of this product, phytocyanin, the development of phytocyanin, which is an extract of a blue-green algae called spirulina. You have heard of spirulina, of course. The idea was that we thought that it was a potential antidepressant, so these are botanical drugs. So what you do is you do a whole range of animal studies, you make mice depressed very cruelly, and you see if they feel better, if you give them some of this stuff. We didn't work, but it turned out that this particular product, because of its potent antioxidant, is basically the world's next natural gatorade. I'm sure you don't believe me. That's fine. So our ideas, we will be working together with Hadassah Brain Lab, which is the world leaders in animal models of psychiatric conditions, on these various extracts, on the natural extracts. Once we see that there's some effect to the natural extract, which we know there will be, we'll start to dissect our particular active molecules. We're investing more and more in our own analytical capacity for this. And remember, all this is coming from cell cellular agriculture. It's not coming from a mushroom, and we're in some kind of legal penumbra, which is going to cost us a shitload of money to sort out. I don't want my PhDs to be arrested, and all that kind of stuff. We're living in this penumbra. And our whole goal with our R&D is to get out of this darn penumbra. And if you don't believe me that this is a penumbra, go to, you start on this site, go to every clinical trial site. And this thing, we get mushrooms from X, Y, and then there's a big dog hole. And then the next thing those mushrooms are being given to patients. That's not the way you do biomedical R&D. I'm an epidemiologist, I'm a biostatistician. You document every single thing that you do. And that's what our goal is, to get this out of the penumbra. And the first thing we could do is torture some poor animals, because that at least is on the edge of the penumbra. We could be quite open, we can publish, we can publish that, and we can get the relevant commissions. This work is being done in the context of a collaboration between Hadassah Brain Labs and King's College. And we are actually having a meeting in 10 days' time at King's College to start outlining this particular liner research. But it's not, it is pre-clinical research. And I think it's vitally important that we go down this route step by step by step by step. As you're getting to the same thing with cannabis at the end of the day, Journal of American Medical Association publishes CPD, no good. Three days later, cannabis, very little effect. Two months later, well, maybe it's actually better as an anti-cancer agent than it is as a psychiatric benefit, maybe minimal, but it's probably a great anti-cancer agent. Let's try to avoid that when we go down this route with the anti-agents, with the other agents, I should say. And Jay, why is your mechanism for, I don't know, growing is the proper word for growing the psilocybin, but why is your methodology more scalable than, say, growing mushrooms? It's kind of amazing here, you know, to actually grow the mushrooms, you have to do transfers to substrate, take the time to let that substrate grow out. There's multiple different points along the way where contamination can mess it up, and then what you get at the end isn't always consistent. There's differences in the mushrooms depending on what stages of the life cycle. You know whether it's a little tiny big mushroom or fully grown out, so... And today you're still going to have to take those mushrooms and homogenize them and make an extract out of it, whereas what we're doing is, you know, just growing out to my sealage and extracting that so you can scale up into a tank just like, you know, going from home brewing to a china brew house and just get bigger tanks and bigger equipment. So, yeah, it's easier to scale up and keep sterile. So you think you're going to be able to do this on a mass scale quickly? Oh, yes, absolutely. How quickly and how big? Oh, sure. I want to know! You know, there's more than 100 million people around the globe, which are your resistance to depression, so if we're waiting for every single mushroom to pop out of the mud, it's going to take a while. Give us the money. The thing that makes me absolutely clear, we're back of the yard's algae sciences. Our business is primarily making sustainable media and growth factors and people above and zero replacement. Because we believe that that's the only way that we'll be able to supply the kind of meat in a non-polluting, non-cruel way. The point here is that what we've found is that in all these sectors, such as lab-grown meat and probably in the whole atheogenic mushroom space, there's so little innovation going on that we have to jump in into the whole thing. In order for us to create a market for our growth media, we're going to have to show people how to grow lots of mushrooms. The problem with that is it doesn't take a shitload of money, but it does take money to do that, especially if you're going to do it well. We have a $300,000, $400,000 that's invested in analytical equipment at the moment. That's to do it well. The transition has been from that black hole where people say we've got the mushrooms and we're doing the clinical trial to we've got those mushrooms. This is what it contains. This is the exact... I want to see the profile of the mushroom which goes into meat if I'm going to be in a clinical trial. I want to see that gel-elected for reasons. Where is it? I want to see the MSDS from the supply. I want to see the certificate of analysis. That's the way you do research. So you talked a little bit before about the human elimination movement as well as the federal research, and I know that a big concern among longtime psychedelic advocates, people who've been in this space for decades and decades, are that basically new players are going to come into the space and psychedelic medicine isn't going to be accessible or equitable once it gets to market. So what are your thoughts on how the psychedelic industry can basically not make the same mistakes that the cannabis industry made and kind of squashing out the long-time players, the farmers who come both and the people who've been around forever. What can we do to bring the capital that's necessary into this space to allow it to scale, to allow these things to get to market while making sure that the people who have been doing this for a long time have a say as well? It's a big challenge. It's about the balance because we need capital for this industry to grow. We need capital for the research projects that you're describing. As a federal and drug research, it's incredibly expensive. We really need to focus on lobbying efforts to get it rescheduled. I know that the Johns Hopkins study, they're trying to make a schedule for and I think going back to what I was saying before, let's not talk about this as another game, let's talk about it as this is a safe, effective potential medicine that's going to heal a lot of people. We have a real opportunity to potentially cure treatment-resistant diseases, resolve crime, resolve suicides, resolve issues that are increasingly plaguing our society. So if we focus it in terms of a really utilitarian perspective, we attract the right people. We don't talk about it in terms of making money. We talk about it in terms of helping and healing. And that's how we start thinking about who your prospective partners are when you think you're synthetic. We talk about priorities. There's no question that this industry attracted the spirit of Charlotteson and the St. Wales salesman because they were stepping into a multi-billion-dollar recreational demand. Civil society doesn't have that. It does have a multi-billion-dollar medical demand so this isn't a drug where people are taking to the streets and it doesn't affect the quite the same population numbers as it does with cannabis, but it certainly could surpass that when you're thinking about the consensual medical applications. So we invest in this drug but you have to be in it for the right reasons and that's to heal people and that's what the money will follow. I work a lot with the farmers out in Humboldt and so much of legalization is advocacy. If you're in the business of cannabis, you're in the business of regulating work compliance and advocacy and it's the same for any kind of psychedelics. We have to shift the stigma. We have to make sure that people understand that this is state. A single one is completely inappropriate for this type of drug application and that's the message we need to be spending and that's how we're going to attract the right people. Yeah, thank you for that. So in terms of investment opportunities what are people talking to you about? As you referenced, psilocybin and psychedelics are very different from cannabis because you can just do psilocybin and walk out your door but I wouldn't recommend it. Really there has been some talk about whether if you criminalization of psilocybin and Denver and other cities and counties is going to allow for some kind of grain market dispensaries to pop up the way that they did in California after cannabis was decriminalized in the 90s but it's really it's a very very different kind of fungi rather and it's a very different kind of experience so what do we think of that? Well make no mistake there are side effects to psilocybin and drug and nausea, disorientation lack of coordination, sometimes overdose these things really do happen and cannabis no one has ever been seriously injured we'll put aside intoxicating and driving but in terms of cannabis use it's only one in the thousands of years of medical application and psilocybin is my understanding of Russia this is the least proof that the ER visit is my understanding so it is safe but at the same time it does deserve a stable and comfortable environment within which to experiment with it so there are some differences between the safety and the widespread use and ability for people to use it as opposed to microdose or whatever that might be but at the same time like I said when you think about the large stocks of the population that have the potential to heal then that's why we really get excited we have to follow right now we have to follow the schedule on protocols for research so this investment research this investment opportunities it's less of an investment it's more of an opportunity to build the market into which you'll ultimately be stepping so supporting the organizations that are doing the research like Max and Johns Hopkins the organizations that are doing those research getting out there and connecting with those organizations to find out who's connecting with them who's trying to submit study defense grants research applications for a schedule one substance that's been taking a long time finding a lab to do manufacturing that's a schedule one registered schedule one certified takes a long time contract manufacturing in general is a tough deal to strike with a manufacturing doctor so lots of different opportunities exist keeping in mind it's a long term critical right now so we're going to do some research and then we'll follow that leads me into my next question perfectly so obviously you were referencing before some of the challenges getting approved to dealing on the manufacturing side of schedule one substances what you know why do you think that or talk to me a little bit about why your methodology you think is going to is more likely to pass the smell test for GMP with the TDA I must be correct as I said we're not expressing on this particular subject I mean we we work to provide the tools to ensure that there is a widespread that there will in the future the near future be a widespread safe supply of entheogens and we believe that the way to do that is through cellular agriculture because that way you never ever have a fully grown mushroom and already that in itself is a tremendous advance from a safety point of view from a good manufacturing point of view we would a lot of what we a lot of what I'm saying has been guided by our experience in the lab grown meat industry where basically even today almost a decade after the first lab grown meat burger was eaten you still can't get another one okay it's an industry which has got a huge amount of hype it's going to have its clear and lost moments and what you see is that essentially the technology has largely lag behind the hype and that means that we are working essentially on things like using an aerobic digest state to make non-polluting media using using algae extracts to make replacements for dead fetuses which are used to grow vegan meat we want to see an industry that flourishes okay where we have not tens of thousands of liters of bioreactives but we have millions upon millions of liters of bioreactives so our role is in this industry the same thing we have to do this R&D and we have to develop a cellular agriculture but our hope is that well if we have to be the world's biggest growers of hallucinogenic mushrooms good we'll look at rich and our investors will get rich it's great you know but it's not really what we we're about we're about the enabling technologies and the engineering that goes behind it but if you want to invest in us to grow a lot of mushrooms come and see me I'll do it