Psychedelics startups don't just want to just reinvent mental health. They also want to reinvent capitalism. And judging by the news coming out of last week's "Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics" conference in Manhattan, they're having some early success. Stephen Jurvetson, co-founder of Future Ventures and a board member at SpaceX, told me ... that he's a true believer in the industry's mission to fix the state of mental-health care. He decided last week to carve up his own estate by giving around half of his net worth to fund psychedelic science. Organizations like the public-benefit corporation of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelics Studies, or MAPS, and the Psychedelic Science Funders Collaborative, a nonprofit organization, have both accepted charitable donations but fund research that could lead to blockbuster drugs. Psychedelics startups do need funding, and badly. Like biotech, it's a high-risk industry with expensive clinical trials and regulatory uncertainty. And patents, a traditional financial engine for biotech, are harder to win for plants that have been around for centuries, or molecules that have already made the rounds as street drugs. MAPS also made a major announcement: The New York-based venture capital fund Vine Ventures has created a $70 million special purpose vehicle to fund its Phase 3 clinical trials on post-traumatic stress disorder and MDMA. The novel funding method ... will help keep MAPS a nonprofit while letting it retain control of its intellectual property.
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