Awakn Files Patents for MDMA-Derived Entities to Treat Addiction

Awakn Life Sciences Corp., a Toronto-based developer of psychedelic medicines to treat addiction, announced it has filed patent applications for a pair of novel MDMA-derived new chemical entities for the treatment of alcohol, opioid and behavioral addictions.

The company also recently announced the appointment of David Nutt as its chief research officer. In March, Awakn acquired proprietary research data on MDMA and ketamine molecules from Nutt’s Equasy Enterprises. A month later, Awakn announced a deal to make Evotec, a drug discovery and development firm based in Germany, a new chemical entities research partner organization.

Awakn said in a release its recent moves have been implemented to expedite the identification and characterization stages of the company’s program to develop new psychedelic medicines and expand its pipeline of drug and therapy development for addiction treatment.

Nutt said in a statement that the two new entities being developed with the aim of combining the therapeutic characteristics of MDMA with more rapid onset of activity and a shorter half-life.

“These improved candidates will enable us to treat more patients at a reduced cost and with the potential to increase both efficacy and the range of disorders we can treat,” Nutt said. “This, together with our teams of partner organizations and in-house drug discovery and development experts will enable us to make rapid progress towards treating addiction, a condition with huge unmet medical needs.”