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JR Rahn: Founder, MindMed
On the Mission: “MindMed’s mission is to discover, develop and deploy psychedelic-inspired medicines to ease suffering and improve health. We are addressing vast markets, including addiction, anxiety, adult ADHD and cluster headaches.”
On COVID-19’s Impact: “COVID-19 will have lasting effects on the mental health of people around the world. We are already seeing overdose deaths increasing as much as 60% in certain municipalities. The mental health side effects of COVID-19 may be more severe than the virus itself.”
On the Industry: “We are definitely seeing a lot of momentum in psychedelics, especially when people try to compare it to cannabis. This is not cannabis, it will never be cannabis, but I think the industry can one day be much bigger than cannabis if the data proves we can solve society’s struggle with mental illness.”
Rick Doblin: Founder and Executive Director, MAPS
On Choosing MDMA: “We did a strategic analysis a long time ago of which psychedelic would likely make it through the regulatory system first and then which patient population we should focus on. Based on that, I felt that MDMA was the drug, being the most gentle of all the psychedelics and the easiest to integrate and the one that’s most inherently therapeutic.”
On Mechanism of Action: “We know from brain scans of PTSD patients that PTSD changes people’s brains, and MDMA can change it back in almost the exact same way. So, where PTSD increases activity in the amygdala (the fear processing part of the brain), MDMA decreases activity in the amygdala. PTSD decreases activity in the prefrontal cortex (where we think logically), MDMA increases activity in the prefrontal cortex.”
On the Business Model: “We have been offered money from investors to get approval in Europe and from the US and we’ve said no. The reason is that we think that we’re going to be able to do things differently than the for-profits. Just even in terms of our pricing. We’re not going to have to bring back all the money to the investors.”
