Beckley Psytech, a UK based private start-up focused on psychedelic medicines, has received £58 million from investors to fund psychedelic research programmes.
Founded by Amanda Fielding, the Countess of Wemyss and March, Beckley Psytech was developed from The Beckley Foundation, a UK based think-tank and NGO that pioneers psychedelic research to drive evidence based policy reform, which was also founded, and directed by Amanda Fielding.
Led by its chief executive Cosmo Fielding Mellen, Beckley Psytech is focused primarily on addressing neurological and psychiatric disorders through the application of psychedelic medicines. Its mission statement says that it is dedicated to helping patients by developing a pipeline of psychedelic compounds into licensed pharmaceutical medicines. Earlier this year they appointed former GW Pharmaceuticals chief financial officer Adam George as a director.
Beckley Psytech completed its oversubscribed round of funding from venture capitalist investors led by Integrated, a healthcare-focused venture fund, and also included the serial investor Jim Mellon and co-founder of Innocent Drinks Richard Reed.
The money will be used to fund an ongoing proof-of-concept study involving low doses of psilocybin being used to treat a rare and debilitating condition thought to affect 45,000 living in the US and Europe, called short-lasting unilateral neuralgiform headache (SUHNA).
The investment will also be used to begin a dose-ranging study on a new formulation of intranasal 5-MEO-DMT, the psychedelic compound famously found in the Sonoran Desert toad, before starting a trial in treatment resistant depression.
Feilding Mellen said that “we hope to be dosing our first patients in the next month or so… and hopefully next year have results for both trials.” He said that he hopes to have a marketed product in the next five years, and is considering a future stock market listing. He goes on to say that The Beckley Foundation was originally started by his mother Amanda Fielding because psychedelics had a great deal of therapeutic potential but were being “ignored by science because of social stigma rather than good scientific reason”.
