Data from a collaborative study between the University Hospital Basel (UHB) and MindMed supports the clinical development of MindMed’s proprietary MM-120 product candidate – a pharmacologically optimised form of LSD – for Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD).
The Phase 2b trial in patients diagnosed with GAD is a multi-centre, parallel, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, dose-optimisation study.
In January 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared MindMed’s Investigational New Drug (IND) application, allowing the Phase 2b dose-optimization trial to proceed. The study aimed to investigate the efficacy and safety of LSD-assisted therapy in patients who suffered from anxiety, with or without association to a life-threatening illness.
The findings, published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, demonstrated long-lasting and notable reductions of anxiety and comorbid depression symptoms up to 16 weeks.
CEO and Director of MindMed, Rob Barrow, stated: “This paper further reinforces the positive preliminary evidence for LSD in patients who suffer from anxiety disorders.
“These results are encouraging and supportive of our proprietary MM-120 product candidate in its potential to one day offer a therapeutic benefit for patients suffering from GAD after just a single-dose administration.”
“Patient dosing in our Phase 2b trial for MM-120 is ongoing and we are continuing to leverage this momentum in our mission to bring our novel therapeutic option to market.
“We believe MM-120 has a highly attractive commercial opportunity given its potential benefits for GAD patients. We also continue to advance our efforts to further strengthen the protection of our intellectual property and proprietary technology that is important to our business.
“Our exclusive rights to the data from this study through our strong and productive collaboration with the Liechti Lab at UHB only enhance our leading position in the development of MM-120.
“We continue to protect and build on this position by filing multiple layers of intellectual property applications and continue to retain clinical data, manufacturing rights to and know-how for our proprietary MM-120 product, which we believe offers significant advantages as a pharmaceutical product over the free-base form of LSD.”
The paper expands on previously reported positive data that was featured in an oral presentation at the PSYCH Symposium in London on May 11, 2022.
Chief medical officer at MindMed, Daniel Karlin, MD, MA, added: ”GAD is a debilitating mental health disorder that is often insufficiently managed with available medications and can significantly impair one’s ability to function.
“We are encouraged by the lasting effects observed in this robust clinical study, which further highlights the therapeutic potential of MM-120 to address the unmet need for novel treatment options.”
