Daniel Carcillo retired from the NHL in 2015, not long after he sustained his seventh concussion. As a member of two Stanley Cup-winning Chicago Blackhawks teams in 2013 and 2015, Carcillo was an enforcer, regularly doling out hits and checking the opposition into the boards.
After nine seasons in the NHL, his hockey career had not only taken a toll on his body, but also on his brain. A career's worth of hits to the head resulted in headaches, insomnia, slurred speech and memory loss. He had a hard time looking at his phone. He wanted little to do with his newborn son.
Carcillo said he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat his traumatic brain injuries (TBI), working with top CTE pathologists and concussion clinics on a range of different protocols and treatments. Nothing worked.
"I thought I was hopeless because I tried everything," he said in an interview. "I read every paper. And I couldn’t help myself. That's when suicidal ideation crept in for the first time in my life. It got really scary."
Luckily, Carcillo said, a former teammate introduced him to a farm that grew psychedelic mushrooms. He took a dose of psilocybin, the naturally occurring substance found in "magic" mushrooms that provides a psychedelic effect, and woke up the next day feeling better than he had in years.
"I felt a little bit of joy come back in my life," he said. "I wanted to grab my phone and call my wife right away and reconnect with my kids. I felt like the brain fog and fatigue was starting to lift. It just got better progressively as the days went on."
Carcillo began treating his brain injuries with a regular low dose of psilocybin for six months, and said his brain tests were coming back cleaner than they had in years.
From there, he knew he wanted to bring this same level of treatment to other survivors of TBI who might also benefit from psilocybin. So in 2020 he founded Wesana, a life sciences startup that aims to use psychedelics to treat TBI. In January, the company raised $4 million in funding from The Conscious Fund and Ambria Capital to begin preclinical trials this year, with hopes of starting human clinical trials in 2022. Wesana is awaiting approvals from the FDA and Health Canada.
The company's first drug pipeline will look to focus on TBI-related depression, Carcillo said.
The startup aims to develop formulations and protocols to help those with brain injuries, but Carcillo is quick to note that psilocybin alone isn't enough to fully treat TBI. He expects the drug to be used in combination with other proven therapies.
Ultimately, Carcillo said he hopes Wesana can treat athletes, veterans, domestic violence victims and others who are struggling with TBI.
"I was there. I don’t want anyone else to live in that space," he said. "I feel really confident that the way this has worked in me, it will work in others."
Carcillo is building Wesana alongside co-founder Chad Bronstein, who's also the co-founder of Fyllo, a marketing and compliance startup in the cannabis industry. Other Wesana leaders include COO Dawn McCollough, the former head of medical research operations at Biogen; board member Mitch Kahn, the founder of Grassroots Cannabis; and chief strategy officer Mark Wingertzahn, who led clinical development teams at both GSK and Pfizer.
A handful of companies and universities are researching the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin. In 2019 John's Hopkins opened the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, where it's studying the effectiveness of psilocybin as a therapy for opioid addiction, Alzheimer's disease, PTSD and other disorders.
Ultimately, Carcillo hopes he can bring the health benefits of psilocybin to more patients and usher in a new era of TBI treatments.
"It's imperative that we get this medicine to the right people," he said.
