Delix Therapeutics' non-hallucinogenic psychoplastogens were chosen as the Innovation of the Year in this year's Sacramento Region Innovation Awards.
Delix Therapeutics is exploring the power of psychedelic drugs for use in brain therapies for mental health and cognitive problems.
The chemistry technology company is pioneering positive brain therapies using some of the actions of hallucinogenic compounds that potentially rewire atrophied or broken neural connections to help heal people suffering from psychiatric and neurological diseases.
The neuroscience company is still a preclinical startup, but it got a big boost in September when it closed a $70 million financing round to advance its leading drug candidates through clinical trials.
The funding will help the company turn years of academic research into potential drug candidates, which harness some powerful properties of psychedelic compounds to reverse atrophy in the brain.
Delix co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer David Olson is a University of California Davis professor of chemistry in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine.
In June, Olson received a 2021 Chancellor’s Innovation Award from UC Davis Chancellor Gary May.
The company hopes to begin Phase 1 clinical trials in people at the end of 2022, said spokesman Rich DiGregorio, via email. The science and innovation continues to be done at Olson’s lab at UC Davis, DiGregorio said. Delix hopes to develop more effective replacements for the class of antidepressant drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which don't work well for all people and which can have side effects.
Delix’s compounds, known as psychoplastogens, are orally ingestible and simple to manufacture.
The psychoplastogens the company is developing have been shown in research studies to promote rapid and structural changes in the brain. Psychedelics are strong psychoplastogens, and the company is working to make non-hallucinogenic analogs of psychedelics for its therapeutics.
The September funding round was led by Artis Ventures of San Francisco, RA Capital Management of Boston and founding investor OMX Ventures of Chicago. Prior to September of this year, Delix had raised $8 million in a funding round in September 2020, according to financing tracker website Crunchbase.
The Essentials
Delix Therapeutics
What it does: Uses analogs of psychedelic compounds for non-hallucinogenic therapies
Headquarters: Boston, research conducted out of labs at UC Davis
CEO: Mark Rus
Employees: 25, with five in Sacramento area
Annual revenue: Pre-revenue
