Mental health

Over recent months, there have been a number of ground-breaking discoveries in drug discovery for mental health conditions. A new class of antidepressants In July 2023, AlzeCure Pharma published the results of a preclinical study supporting the antidepressive effects ACD856, the first in a new class of antidepressants. The article in the journal Psychopharmacology focuses […]

Biomia, the first company spun out from BioInnovation Institute’s Bio Studio programme, has secured $3 million in pre-seed financing from an international syndicate of investors. Biomia says it plans to use the investment to accelerate its development of plant-inspired natural and new-to-nature halogenated small molecule drug candidates and further build its biosynthetic manufacturing platform. Chief […]

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Sage Therapeutics’ Zurzuvae (zuranolone), the first oral medication indicated to treat postpartum depression (PPD) in adults. Until now, treatment for PPD was only available as an IV injection given by a health care provider in certain health care facilities. “Postpartum depression is a serious and potentially […]

DDW’s Diana Spencer provides an overview of the latest innovations in drug discovery for mental health. World Wellbeing Week was created to celebrate the many aspects of wellbeing, from meaningful, purposeful work to financial security, physical, mental and emotional health, social resilience and empathic corporate and civic leadership, community relations and care for the environment. […]

Pangaea Data has been awarded a strategic partnership by the newly established Mental Health Research for Innovation Centre (M-RIC).   Pangaea is a provider of a novel artificial intelligence (AI)-driven product for characterising patients by automatically discovering clinical signatures for 4,000 hard-to-diagnose conditions in an evolving, privacy-preserving and scalable manner.   M-RIC will be applying Pangaea’s […]

The UK government has promised that patients will benefit from cutting-edge new treatments with the introduction of a Vaccine Taskforce style approach to tackling health challenges.  The government has committed over £113 ($135) million to fund research into four healthcare missions – cancer, obesity, mental health and addiction. Building on the Vaccine Taskforce model, the […]

The Psychiatry Consortium and the British Neuroscience Association recently published their ‘Guiding Principles for Robust Target Validation in Psychiatry’. Dr Ekta Patel, Psychiatry Consortium Partnership Manager, spoke to DDW’s Diana Spencer about how the guide can help researchers to create a target validation package and the need for new therapeutic targets in this underfunded specialty.  […]

Psilocybin, a psychedelic derived from mushrooms, has been proven effective as a therapy for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) in the largest study of its kind.  The results of COMPASS Pathways’ Phase IIb trial have been published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).  The data show that after a single 25mg dose of COMP360 psilocybin, […]

Will an expansion in the use of effective digital biomarkers help improve the productivity of drug development in neuroscience? Ask Dr J Mark Treherne, Dr Jenny Barnett and Dr Paula Moran.  Increasingly, digital biomarkers are becoming more effectively used in the discovery and development of drugs that act in the central nervous system. However, unlike […]

Beckley Psytech has completed Series B financing, raising $80 million from venture capital (VC) investors to fund its research programmes. The financing was initially set at $50 million and was upsized to $80 million due to interest from investors in broadening and accelerating the clinical development of Beckley Psytech’s research pipeline. Beckley Psytech will use […]

Neo Kuma Ventures has invested in seven innovative healthcare companies. The initial investments have proved successful with three of the seven companies going public this year, yielding between +180% and +680% return on initial investment. Following the launch of its fund in December 2020, Neo Kuma has invested more than £5 million across ATAI Life […]