The University of South Florida Research Foundation has invested $200,000 in Psilera, a Tampa-based biotech company developing therapies for neurological disorders.
The startup has worked to develop the next generation of non-hallucinogenic psychedelic therapies, but the focus of the funding, according to Co-Founder Jackie von Salm, is on disorders like Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), a progressive condition that impacts cognition and behavior with no currently available treatments.
"The USF Research Foundation is proud to support the innovative and compassionate research being conducted by Psilera," Dr. Sylvia Thomas, president & CEO of the USF Research Foundation and vice president for USF Research & Innovation, said in a statement. "This promising new treatment is a patient-centric therapy that holds the potential to help countless individuals and families."
Von Salm said that though Psilera is part of the USF ecosystem, the company only learned about the USF Research Foundation last year.
“We were doing another earlier stage funding round, and we were just curious if we could pitch,” von Salm said. “We ended up showing them the progress we've made and everything we're working on [like PSIL-006].”
Psilera’s lead clinical candidate, PSIL-006, is designed as a first-in-class therapy to address the psychological symptoms of FTD.
According to a statement, recent preclinical studies have shown that PSIL-006 helps improve psychiatric symptoms, enhances learning and memory, and restores standard sleep patterns in disease models.
Von Salm said the investment underscores the importance of supporting innovative research in the field of neurodegenerative diseases.
“It's very easy sometimes for companies to either focus so much on science, they forget about the patients, or they focus so much on the patients, they forget about the science,” von Salm said. “We really wanted to do the opposite and balance that.”
It also highlights the foundation’s support of local startup research.
"As USF alumni and residents of the USF Connect Incubator, Jackie and I are proud to have the USF Research Foundation's endorsement and investment into our patient-centric research initiatives," Psilera's CEO and Co-Founder Chris Witowski said. "USF has always been a wonderful partner that encourages companies like ours to push the boundaries of science."
Chris Witowski was named one of Tampa Bay Business Journal’s 2024 40 under 40 honorees, and Psilera was a Tampa Bay Inno Awards honoree of the year in the HealthTech category in 2023.
“At Psilera, we set out just over five years ago, focused on creating more accessible medications specifically for central nervous system disorders,” von Salm said. “Frontotemporal dementia is a rare form of dementia that can start as early as your 40s, which is one of the reasons that we wanted to target it. There are currently no approved drugs on the market, and the way that a lot of different psychedelics work in the brain is specifically in an area that affects these types of frontotemporal dementia patients.”
Von Salm said once they were able to make it non-hallucinogenic, it [became] ideal for these types of patients, including von Salm’s father, who died from FTD a year and a half ago.
“There was an extra reason it was on our minds, but it just actually happened to work out that the science also backed that up,” von Salm said.
As for the next steps, von Salm said Psilera will look to establish enough data and information in the next six months to reach human trials.
“It's been amazing to be able to see all of this play out and also to be able to work with a lot of [the players] at USF that we've worked with over the last few years,” von Salm said. “We’ve been able to make a lot happen in a short amount of time that I think really wouldn't have been possible without that support.”
