📢 End of Year Update: PsyMed Ventures Update
Fund update, new frontiers we're exploring, and more
Welcome back to the PsyMed Ventures newsletter! 👋
We’re excited to share a fund update, frontiers we’re exploring, the latest Business Trip episodes, and more.
Fund Update
The transition towards a new paradigm in mental healthcare accelerated in the end of 2023. MAPS submitted their New Drug Application for MDMA-Assisted Therapy for PTSD. FDA approval could happen as soon as 2024. The White House proposed new rules to strengthen mental health parity in insurance coverage. Spravato (Janssen Pharmaceuticals’s esketamine nasal spray) reached $169m in Q2 sales and is on pace for $1b+ peak sales. And Apple published a patent for health tracking sensors in AirPods, including EEG, EMG, EOG, to monitor brain waves, muscle activity, eye movements, and heart rate.
We continued to deepen our network within the academic research community. Several fund investments are university spinouts. To continue our support of the ecosystem, we published a guide on how to transition from academia to startup. We also published a 3-part series on Business Trip about Stanford’s psychedelic research initiatives.
PsyMed Fund I - Portfolio Update
Here’s a roundup of our Fund I portfolio investments. See our previous investments on our website.
Journey Clinical: Journey Clinical’s platform enables licensed therapists to offer psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.
Freedom Biosciences: Drug developer for second-generation ketamine and psychedelic therapeutics. Freedom’s lead programs seek to address the main shortcomings of ketamine therapy – extending its efficacy and limiting its abuse potential.
Delix: Drug developer for novel neuroplasticity-promoting therapeutics for central nervous system diseases such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Motif: A therapy for treatment-resistant depression via a minimally invasive implant powered by magnetoelectric transfer. Once the Motif neural pacemaker is implanted, patients can manage at home, taking less than 20 minutes of their day. We recorded a Business Trip episode featuring Jacob (Motif founder). A great primer on what they’re building. Listen here.
Stealth Company: Developing a Transcranial Focused Ultrasound neurotech platform to treat mental health disorders.
Stealth Company: Transcranial electric stimulation (tES) platform for mental health, starting with adult ADHD
Stealth Company: What they do: AI-assisted therapy tool for therapists
Stealth Company: marketplace for transformative mental health modalities.
🔬Frontiers we’re exploring
Food as Medicine: From the emergence of digital food pharmacies to metabolic psychiatry, we’re excited about the mental health establishment recognizing food’s ability to treat mental health.
Consciousness startups: We’re exploring startups enabling and expanding access to altered states of consciousness. We co-authored a market landscape covering 7 categories of consciousness startups: psychedelics, breathwork, meditation, dreams, prayer, & light & sound.
AI in Mental Health: We anticipate AI to transform areas like clinician support, pharmaceutical research, digital modeling, and crisis response. We approach this field with cautious optimism, carefully evaluating ethics and commitment to putting patient welfare first.
🌎 PsyMed Ventures in the World
Dealmakers Podcast: Matias on His Last Startup Raising Over $100 Million And Investing In Others To Elevate Mental Health
Unfiltered Media: Matias explaining Psychedelics 2.0 and 3.0
Beginner’s Mind: Matias Serebrinsky: Shaping the Future of Mental Health: AI, Psychedelics, and Beyond
🍄 Business Trip
Tom Insel: Startups, AI, Psychedelics, and SSRIs - Former NIMH director and serial entrepreneur discusses the realities of the US healthcare system and the future of mental health.
Food as Medicine for Mental Health: Drew Ramsey - Dr. Drew Ramsey shares how food interventions could reduce mental healthcare costs.
Ketogenic Diet for Brain Health: Jan Baszucki - Jan Baszucki recounts how the ketogenic diet helped her son manage bipolar disorder and how to fund businesses in this space.
Investing in Neurotech 101: Alex Morgan of Khosla Ventures - An insider’s overview of the neurotech landscape from one of the most active investors in the ecosystem.
All you need is d̶r̶u̶g̶s̶ energy: Motif Neurotech's Implants for Depression - Jacob Robinson shares his entrepreneurial journey from academic professor to founder pioneering minimally invasive implants to precisely deliver neuromodulation for mental health.
Mental health and the gut (Part 2) - Bloom Science - Dr. Christopher Reyes of Bloom Science educates us on the link between gut microbes, neurotransmitters, and mood.
Mental health and the gut (Part 1) - Holobiome - Dr. Phil Strandwitz of Holobiome discusses the gut-brain connection and microbial therapies for mental health, including fecal transplants.
The Startup Landscape for Expanding Consciousness - A deeper dive into the emerging market of consciousness startups with Scott Britton, an entrepreneur who writes a consciousness newsletter.
Psychedelic research at Stanford: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3: A sampler of Stanford’s psychedelic research with Rob Malenka (Part 1), Boris Heifets (Part 2), and Carolyn Rodriguez (Part 3).
Non-profits you can support
We wanted to highlight three organizations doing inspiring work in mental health. If you want to support their work, we’re happy to connect you.
Mindshift Recovery: Dr. Jud Brewer is the co-founder of MindSciences, addiction psychiatrist & neuroscientist, and professor at Brown University. His non-profit, Mindshift Recovery, is creating a new evidence based approach to addiction recovery – through the latest science on behavior change delivered via a digital application, evidence-based recovery support tools available digitally and in-person, and comprehensive social support delivered 1:1 and in groups.
Center for the Science of Meditation: Dr. Matthew Sacchet, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, conducts pioneering research on advanced meditation, mapping meditative states and their transformative potential using neuroimaging. His goal is to bring advanced meditation into the mainstream and develop more effective clinical treatments, with the vision of launching the Center for the Science of Meditation to create a global hub advancing research on meditation. Philanthropists are invited to support his research on advanced meditation.
Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies: Research laboratory using immersive, experiential technology, neuromodulation, neurofeedback, and altered states to study consciousness. Their current focus is on fostering meditative and entheogenic experiences. Principal Investigator Nicco Reggente and his team are based in Santa Monica, CA.
We appreciate your ongoing support.
Best,
The PsyMed Team
P.S. Here are photos from our in person events!
LPs and portfolio founders dinner in NYC
PsyMed NY Tech Week Mental Health Social
PsyMed SF Mental Health Social