Each year, Sacramento Business Journal Inno reporter Mark Anderson identifies the top local startups set to make waves in the year ahead. Delix Therapeutics is one of 11 that made the cut in 2024.
Delix Therapeutics
Delix Therapeutics is using analogs of psychedelic compounds for non-hallucinogenic therapies that can potentially reverse brain atrophy and rewire neural circuits to heal people with psychiatric and neurological diseases.
Delix licensed University of California Davis technology and supported several research projects on campus related to psychoplastogens and neuroplasticity.
Delix, which has raised $70 million, is based in Boston, but its co-founder and lead researcher is UC Davis professor David Olson, who works locally. Olson is also the director of the new Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics at UC Davis, which was launched in 2023 with a goal of improving mental health through chemistry and science. Funded with $5 million from the university, the institute will coordinate with about 300 faculty members in centers, other institutes and departments at the university's campus in Davis and at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.
The company’s first trials are being conducted at the Centre for Human Drug Research in the Netherlands. In his research, Olson discovered that several novel psychoplastogens have therapeutic potential in preclinical models. Basically, they are able to safely rewire parts of the brain. Delix is working to commercialize neuroplasticity-promoting therapeutics from those compounds.
Delix has a library of thousands of compounds that have shown promise to promote neuroplasticity in preclinical models. The trial candidate matched or exceeded the efficacy of natural psychedelic compounds, and it did that without hallucinatory responses even at high doses.
