Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: So in an upcoming edition of Bloomberg Business Week Talks
Speaker 1: that we featured in the magazine, we're gonna talk to
Speaker 1: one of this year's successful I p o s, which
Speaker 1: is up more than a hundred percent since its debut
Speaker 1: as an a d R in the New York Stock
Speaker 1: Exchange in September. It's the company that has patented a
Speaker 1: synthetic version of the active ingredient in so called magic
Speaker 1: mushrooms for use in treatment resistant depression. We're delighted to
Speaker 1: welcome to Bloomberg Radio Compass Pathways chairman, CEO and co
Speaker 1: founder George Goldsmith, who joins us on the phone overseas
Speaker 1: in Europe, Georgia. Is so great to have you here
Speaker 1: with us. We've been talking about your company since it
Speaker 1: was featured in Business Week magazine. How are you. I'm
Speaker 1: doing well, Carol, and thank you so much for having
Speaker 1: me on. Well, it's great, it's great to have you here,
Speaker 1: and what a year it's been, and what a year
Speaker 1: Togo public Um. First of all, tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about your company and how you came across this,
Speaker 1: because I do understand it's a pretty personal story. UM. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is a personal story, and I think that in
Speaker 1: many ways, so many interesting companies do for him that way.
Speaker 1: And so from our point of view, we had our
Speaker 1: son really struggled with mental health issues when he went
Speaker 1: to university, like far too many young people do. We thought,
Speaker 1: how hard could this be? You know, they're good treatments
Speaker 1: and therapies. Yet the more he encountered, the more difficult
Speaker 1: it was for him to be recognizable to us with
Speaker 1: the side effects, and it didn't really help him. So
Speaker 1: we then started talking to lots of different people doing
Speaker 1: our own research. My co founder and wife, he carried
Speaker 1: amount of dis guy as a doctor, and and in
Speaker 1: her own researchers she stumbled across psilocybin and philocybin research
Speaker 1: and we became really intrigued by this. Um. The other
Speaker 1: thing that happened simultaneously is the more people we talked
Speaker 1: about our own challenges that we were facing, the more
Speaker 1: we heard from others about their challenges. And these would
Speaker 1: be long term friends who we've known for a while,
Speaker 1: but they never felt comfortable sharing their own challenges until
Speaker 1: we did. And that really led us to to understand
Speaker 1: that almost everybody has a story of you know, how
Speaker 1: the current system isn't quite helping enough people well enough,
Speaker 1: and that really inspired us to look at this research.
Speaker 1: We saw this promise and and the issue is how
Speaker 1: do we bring it to patients, not just bring it
Speaker 1: into the next journal article. And journal articles are critically important,
Speaker 1: but they're necessary but not sufficient to bring this to patients.
Speaker 1: And that's really our academic well and I do you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I was doing some reading on this and
Speaker 1: that my understanding is for those, you know, patients and
Speaker 1: individuals who deal with and and suffer depression, that they're
Speaker 1: the existing treatments only really work for about seventy patients,
Speaker 1: leaving as many as ninety millions still struggling around the world.
Speaker 1: I think that's some world health organization. So it is
Speaker 1: a huge and I hate to put it in business terms,
Speaker 1: but we are Bloomberg. It's a huge market. It is
Speaker 1: but giving great markets of suffering. But it is a
Speaker 1: huge market right in that sense. And so there's a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of suffering and I think we've been pretty
Speaker 1: good at developing tools to ameliorate of that. But the
Speaker 1: is quite quite difficult because what happens is with each
Speaker 1: new treatment, those people actually have less and less likelihood
Speaker 1: to be helped by what's next. And there's been very
Speaker 1: large studies in the US by the National Studamental Health,
Speaker 1: and we really have documentation for that. So if we
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to do something unique here, which is
Speaker 1: well do so what we do is we provide a
Speaker 1: very high dose of sulicybin and carefully controlled setting under
Speaker 1: supervision by especially trained therapists. So this isn't anything that
Speaker 1: anyone would do at home and um patients listen to
Speaker 1: a special soundtrack and they're really supported through this process.
Speaker 1: And what happens is that afterwards, for many patients they
Speaker 1: experience an immediate reduction and depression that actually lasts for
Speaker 1: quite a while. What are research really looking at is well,
Speaker 1: who benefits not everyone, so who doesn't and what separates
Speaker 1: the people who benefit for a few weeks from the
Speaker 1: single dose for a few months of people who actually
Speaker 1: have even longer experiences. So we've went to the FDA
Speaker 1: and actually we're operating now in ten countries dueing clinical research,
Speaker 1: twenty one research sites, and we're really looking at how
Speaker 1: do we do the real deep research to generate the
Speaker 1: information and insight we need to go to what's the
Speaker 1: next phase for US, which would be Phase three trials,
Speaker 1: and we'll be putting out on our Phase two trials
Speaker 1: about a year from now. So we've been really excited
Speaker 1: about the progress. And I should say that the FDA
Speaker 1: has named your experimental treatment quote a breakthrough therapy, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, really wonderful to kind of get that acknowledgement,
Speaker 1: but it also means now you've got to do more rigorous,
Speaker 1: more risk adverse testing. It's a lot of pressure, I'm assuming,
Speaker 1: and you've got to make sure you're working with the
Speaker 1: right scientists, the best scientists, the best clinical trials correct well,
Speaker 1: absolutely and absolutely and then even more so right because
Speaker 1: obviously there's a history here um as what we're looking
Speaker 1: to do is the highest quality, rigorous, most rigorous research.
Speaker 1: The first support of Call for US was actually even
Speaker 1: before we formed the company, to speak with regulators players
Speaker 1: just to understand what did they think about this and
Speaker 1: what we were really struck by in all the conversations,
Speaker 1: and the breakthrough therapy designation is I think a perfect
Speaker 1: example of this. The problem is so big, and that's
Speaker 1: what you said, you know, there's such a huge amount
Speaker 1: of suffering here. The tools we have are good for some,
Speaker 1: but not good enough. They saw this is the promising
Speaker 1: So what we found is that a huge amount of support.
Speaker 1: But we really have to get this right, and we
Speaker 1: have to get it right for patients, for their families
Speaker 1: and society. Just got about a minute. Then I've got
Speaker 1: to do some news and then we'll come back. But
Speaker 1: how big of a market opportunity do you think is
Speaker 1: there for compass pathways? Just quickly? Well, I think that
Speaker 1: what we see and since not obviously they're about ninety
Speaker 1: million people suffering from so called treatment resistent depression. But
Speaker 1: to be clear, this isn't people who is not a
Speaker 1: group of people who are resisting treatment. This is a
Speaker 1: group of people for whom are treatment stoke work and
Speaker 1: so perhaps you know, I think this is really really important,
Speaker 1: But that's just the start, because really what we're looking
Speaker 1: at is working on areas of mental health where people
Speaker 1: get caught in patterns of negative thinking or patterns of
Speaker 1: obsessive thinking that happens in other areas like anxiety or
Speaker 1: O c D or other things. And we're really curious
Speaker 1: about how could this mechanism of a high dose of
Speaker 1: psilocybin therapy yield benefit for other classes of people who
Speaker 1: aren't helped enough. So is this like a potentially a
Speaker 1: multibillion dollar rug potential just quickly, just got about fifteen
Speaker 1: seconds here. Um, Well, I think that it is potential
Speaker 1: to have it be a therapy. It's really important that
Speaker 1: it's not a drug drugs. It's given in constant combination
Speaker 1: with psychological support and that's the critical pick. Hey, So
Speaker 1: before I move on, though, you did say and I
Speaker 1: thought this was a really important distinction, George, as you said,
Speaker 1: it's not a drug, it's a potential therapy. Having said that,
Speaker 1: I do think you know, our listeners are curious, um
Speaker 1: about how big that market size might be anxiety disorders
Speaker 1: to prench it the depression treatment market, it's expected to
Speaker 1: be something like twenty one billion. So what's your expectation
Speaker 1: or thoughts on this? So a few things. One is
Speaker 1: I appreciate your digging into this. So just to give
Speaker 1: you some and your listeners some perspective, depression is the
Speaker 1: leading cause of disability worldwide, just to pressure UM, and
Speaker 1: in the US, the annual call of depression is forecast
Speaker 1: to be about two hundred billions per year, and a
Speaker 1: large number of that is direct costs of out patients
Speaker 1: in patient medical services pharmaceutical services, and the number you've
Speaker 1: referred to is largely in the pharmaceutical space. Now, what
Speaker 1: we know is that about a third of patients, as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, simply aren't helped, and the third of patients
Speaker 1: that aren't helped actually are about three or four times
Speaker 1: more expensive two or three depends on the kind of
Speaker 1: where where you're doing the data. UM. Then patients who
Speaker 1: are helped by these medicines UM. And so we have
Speaker 1: not only a very large group of patients who aren't helped,
Speaker 1: but also those are the most expensive patients. And so
Speaker 1: if we could make a difference in their lives, I
Speaker 1: think there's a huge opportunity to really um develop a
Speaker 1: new model of care for them. And this is what's
Speaker 1: so interesting about what we're doing. It is a therapy, right,
Speaker 1: It's a single dose under supervised circumstances, with preparation and
Speaker 1: then some follow up afterwards. And what's really unique about
Speaker 1: this So they did some really fascinating work at Johns
Speaker 1: Hopkins where a lot of this research was reborn in
Speaker 1: the over ten years ago, one of the questions they
Speaker 1: asked patients who had gone through this, and they asked
Speaker 1: this question six weeks after this experience. They said, how
Speaker 1: meaningful would you say this experience was in your life?
Speaker 1: Personally meaningful? And people were given, you know, the most meaningful,
Speaker 1: the top five, you know, and so over seventy the
Speaker 1: single experience was one of the top five most meaningful
Speaker 1: experiences of their life. Right, So, you can't you can't
Speaker 1: really put you can't. You can't, you can't write no, no, no.
Speaker 1: And I wish you we were in person because you
Speaker 1: could see me smiling, because you can't put a value
Speaker 1: on it. And I have a sister who works in
Speaker 1: this area, so I've kind of grown up learning about this,
Speaker 1: and I agree that there's an unbelievable cost by not
Speaker 1: you know, helping out this sector of our population. And
Speaker 1: also it's invaluable in terms of they basically their lives back.
Speaker 1: Having said that, you kind of evaded my answer. So
Speaker 1: there was this like a multibillion dollar potential treatment or
Speaker 1: tens of Yes, I think it is multi billion. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and you know we've had so but again that's if
Speaker 1: the trials were well, what's let's let's talk about that,
Speaker 1: because that's a big deal. I mean, listen, we're all
Speaker 1: learning about the drug process right because of the drug
Speaker 1: approval process, because of COVID. What challenges does does the
Speaker 1: US present, What regulatory hurdles still remain? And I do
Speaker 1: wonder if you're following kind of the playbook from marijuana
Speaker 1: kind of prescription first, recreational second, how are you thinking
Speaker 1: about it? Not at all. Now we're really thinking about
Speaker 1: the huge unmet needs there is for patients. Uh, And
Speaker 1: that's you know, what we're really focused on is access,
Speaker 1: and that means approval by medicaid, by you know, insurers.
Speaker 1: So from day one, we've been really focusing on making
Speaker 1: sure that if this in fact is successful in trials,
Speaker 1: people have access to it. And that means working with
Speaker 1: insurers even in the design of clinical trials to make
Speaker 1: sure they have the evidence. Hey, this for this patient population.
Speaker 1: So that's super important to us. It's a different model
Speaker 1: than a recreational model. You're gonna have to come back
Speaker 1: because I want to talk more. We still have a
Speaker 1: few minutes, but I just want to squeeze in some things.
Speaker 1: When when did you recognize the potential in this space?
Speaker 1: Was it after your son or was it when you
Speaker 1: started doing some digging, Like, what was the thing that
Speaker 1: you just said? Kind of the aha moment, Well, the
Speaker 1: aha moment was being awakened in February. Kacha and my wife,
Speaker 1: who is busy doing medical research in her sleepless nights
Speaker 1: as a doctor, and she said, I came across this
Speaker 1: thing called philocybin um. It's the active ingredient and magic
Speaker 1: mushrooms you can wear in the sixties and seventies. What
Speaker 1: do you think of that? So say, what money finding this?
Speaker 1: And you know, obviously I grown up in that time,
Speaker 1: so it was familiar with these things, but it was
Speaker 1: just a whole world that I had completely forgotten about
Speaker 1: from that time. So listen, just got about forty five
Speaker 1: seconds left here. Why synthetic um psilocybin? And I'm just
Speaker 1: curious how you produce it? And just quickly yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: pay we need to it's a medicine, so we need
Speaker 1: to know exactly what patients are receiving, what the doses.
Speaker 1: It has to be the same quality every place on
Speaker 1: the planet that it's given. So that's why you have
Speaker 1: to use synthetic. It's the regulatory path forward. It's one
Speaker 1: where we always know there are no impurities, that people
Speaker 1: get exactly what it says on the tent and then
Speaker 1: we can do controlled research. So it's super important that
Speaker 1: in a medical setting we use synthesize pilotybe and that's
Speaker 1: something that we've spent a lot of time developing and
Speaker 1: working with the regulators on both sides of the Atlantic
Speaker 1: to make sure it's the highest purity and genuinely a
Speaker 1: medicine with evidence. We'll just then the difference between a
Speaker 1: drug and and a medicine is evidence. And so we're
Speaker 1: creating a atis in Frognis, which is psilocybin, a proprietary
Speaker 1: form of right and then with the evidence of the works.
Speaker 1: Got it, George, we have to go. Please come back.
Speaker 1: I'd love to learn more George Goldsmith and also listen
Speaker 1: to more of the trial the trials George, of course
Speaker 1: of Compass Pathways