Vancouver, British Columbia, June 9, 2021
Filament Ventures Corp., doing business as Filament Health (“Filament” or the “Company”), an exclusively-natural psychedelic drug discovery and extraction technology company, today announced it has grown its 20th cultivar of psilocybin-containing mushrooms at its GMP facility in Metro Vancouver. Filament also shared updates on its propagation research, including the discovery of a potent cultivar of psilocybin-containing fungus.
“We are excited to share that we’ve recently identified a cultivar that contains four times the psilocybin content of more commonly-known cultivars. In addition, we have identified eight additional psychoactive alkaloids present within fungal biomass, highlighting the potential for developing proprietary extract formulations,” said Ryan Moss, Director of Research at Filament. “Findings such as these emphasize the need for further research on these cultivars and other psychedelic organisms, especially given the need for a strictly standardized dose in clinical settings. Filament is dedicated to providing safe and effective natural psychedelic extracts.”
In order to identify the highest-potency cultivars, Filament has grown and analyzed twenty varieties of psychoactive mushrooms, and has 75 further cultivars undergoing screening. Filament is currently using three high-content, high-efficiency primary strains for production, and will be entering one of the non-psilocybin compounds identified into a Phase 1 clinical trial in partnership with the TRpR Program at UCSF. Filament’s in-house operations include propagation, extraction, research, and manufacturing using its patent-pending technologies. Current production at the Company’s 3,500 square foot facility yields the equivalent of over 25,000 therapeutic doses of psilocybin per year.
“Our research program infrastructure comprises a critical part of our strategic roadmap, and we are delighted with the resulting progress in advancing the field of natural psychedelic research,” said Filament CEO, Benjamin Lightburn. “Rather than developing synthetically-prepared versions of natural compounds, we view nature as the most potent source for new and effective therapies. Furthermore, we are encouraged by regulatory advancements such as Oregon Measure 109 and California Senate Bill 519, which advance non-pharmaceutical psychedelic-assisted therapy where naturally-derived psychedelic products will likely be preferred.”
These natural compounds are best unlocked through rigorous research and skillfully applied extraction techniques. Filament is well-poised to tackle this challenge with a management team that has decades of experience in natural extraction, purification, and standardization, as well as patent-pending versions of these processes that it leans on to produce safe and consistent product formulations.