C&EN Global Enterprise
October 20, 2025
Special To C En Mara Johnson-Groh
A facility in Vancouver, Canada, operated by Filament Health, produces enough psilocybin-containing magic mushrooms annually to provide hallucinogenic trips for 80,000 people, but these mushrooms are grown exclusively for research and clinical trials, not the black market. While most psychedelic research uses synthetic psilocybin, a small group of scientists argue that the therapeutic potential of magic mushrooms may involve more than just psilocybin, as over a dozen different compounds have been identified in them. This work suggests that natural mushroom extracts could reveal missing elements in psychedelic research.
C&EN Global Enterprise
May 20, 2024
Sarah Braner
Reunion Neuroscience, a mental-health start-up, raised $103 million in series A funding co-led by MPM BioImpact and Novo Holdings. Its lead compound, RE104, is a novel psychedelic prodrug of 4-OH-DiPT that targets the serotonin 2A receptor similarly to psilocybin and is thought to enhance neuroplasticity and neural pathway formation, though its exact mechanism remains unknown. RE104 is being developed to treat adjustment disorder in cancer patients and postpartum depression. According to the company's CEO, RE104's key advantage over psilocybin is its shorter duration: a therapy session with RE104 is expected to take about half the 6–8 hours required for psilocybin.
C&EN Global Enterprise
November 7, 2022
Gina Vitale
Lusaris Therapeutics launched with $60 million in series A financing to develop serotonergic neuroplastogens for severe neuropsychiatric and neurological conditions. These compounds are said to induce favorable neural plasticity. Its lead candidate for treatment-resistant depression is a sublingual dissolvable tablet formulation of the psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT, using technology exclusively licensed from Catalent.
C&EN Global Enterprise
March 7, 2022
Bethany Halford
Psychedelic compounds such as psilocybin and MDMA are emerging as potential treatments for mental illnesses like major depressive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. Some companies aim to bring these drugs to market, while others seek to eliminate their hallucinogenic effects through chemistry, a controversial approach. Ancient civilizations used these substances as spiritual guides, and counterculture embraced them for consciousness alteration, but governments once demonized them. After decades of being considered too politically charged for scientific study, psychedelics are now poised to enter mainstream medicine as treatments for intractable mental illness.
C&EN Global Enterprise
February 7, 2022
Bethany Halford
A structural biology approach reveals how hallucinogenic and nonhallucinogenic molecules bind to the 5-HT 2A serotonin receptor, a target for LSD and psilocybin that also treats mood disorders. By determining crystal structures of the receptor bound to LSD, psilocin, serotonin, or lisuride, researchers visualized differences in binding and designed molecules that may retain mood-altering effects without causing hallucinations.
C&EN Global Enterprise
October 4, 2021
Ryan Cross
A Boston-based start-up, Delix Therapeutics, has raised $70 million in series A financing to develop therapies inspired by psychedelics for neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases. The company is part of a growing movement to repurpose recreational drugs into mainstream medicine, as psilocybin emerges as a promising experimental therapy for major depressive disorder. However, many clinical trials of psychedelics require trained psychotherapists to guide patients through drug-induced hallucinations. Delix aims to create psychedelic-inspired compounds that heal without hallucinations, an approach based on work from a neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis whose 2018 study in animals showed that multiple compounds could promote neural plasticity without hallucinogenic effects.
C&EN Global Enterprise
December 18, 2020
Bethany Halford
Chemists have created a new molecule, tabernanthalog, by systematically modifying the structure of the psychedelic compound ibogaine. Tabernanthalog has a simpler structure, making it easier to synthesize, and may someday be used to treat neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression and addiction. The researchers, based in David E. Olson’s lab at the University of California, Davis, believe psychedelics can regrow neurons and reestablish synaptic connections in brain areas that degenerate in these illnesses. They aimed to engineer a compound that lacks the hallucinogenic effects of psychedelics like ketamine, which requires medical supervision, while retaining therapeutic benefits.
C&EN Global Enterprise
October 7, 2019
Megha Satyanarayana
A team of chemical engineers engineered the bacterium Escherichia coli to produce large quantities of psilocybin, the psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms. The work, published in Metabolic Engineering, addresses the challenge of manufacturing psilocybin as it enters clinical trials for depression and other brain conditions. The fungal enzymatic pathway for psilocybin was only described in 2017; it starts with a tryptophan-based compound and ends with a phosphorylated product. The phosphate group is unstable in synthetic chemistry but readily added by biological systems, and in the human body it is removed to form psilocin, which crosses the blood-brain barrier.
C&EN Global Enterprise
August 21, 2017
Steve Ritter
The four enzymes that Psilocybe mushrooms use to produce psilocybin, the compound responsible for their psychedelic effects, have been identified and characterized more completely than ever before. Researchers at Friedrich Schiller University Jena then used these enzymes to create the first enzymatic synthesis of psilocybin, a step toward large-scale production for medical applications such as treating anxiety, depression, and nicotine addiction. The discovery builds on Albert Hofmann's isolation of psilocybin nearly 60 years ago and addresses a long-standing gap in understanding the mushroom's biosynthetic pathway.