Staff
Psychedelic biotech company Awakn Life Sciences Corp. (NEO: AWKN) began trading today, June 23, 2021, on the NEO Exchange Inc. under the symbol “AWKN”. the company has raised C$13.5 million to date with large life science investors and dedicated psychedelic/CNS focused funds including Ambria Capital, Iter Investments, JLS Fund, Negev Capital and Neo Kuma Ventures.
The company has plans to open three UK psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy clinics where it will deliver ketamine-assisted therapies near term and MDMA when they secure authorization in 2021 (Bristol, London, and Manchester). The company’s target is 20 clinics by the end of 2024.
“Listing on the NEO is an important milestone for Awakn to continue to build on our dual strategic focus of developing psychedelic drugs, therapies, and enabling technologies to treat Addiction, and delivering psychedelic treatments for Addiction in our clinics,” said Awakn CEO, Anthony Tennyson. “The NEO listing will enable us to accelerate the execution of our drug discovery, therapy development, advanced analytics, and open clinic rollout programs.”
The listing follows the successful completion of the previously announced reverse takeover of a Canadian public company, 2835517 Ontario Ltd., by Toronto-based Awakn Life Sciences Inc. The public company was subsequently renamed Awakn Life Sciences Corp. in connection with the reverse takeover and the listing on the NEO. Additionally, the Company raised gross proceeds of approximately USD$8.3 million through a brokered private placement.
Awakn will be providing evidence-backed ketamine-assisted psychotherapy for Alcohol Use Disorder and is currently in phase 2 a/b trial using Ketamine for reduction of Alcoholic relapse (led by Prof. Celia Morgan). The company is also entering a phase 2b clinical trial to test the effectiveness of MDMA-assisted therapy for the treatment of patients with non-physically dependent (‘Harmful Use’) Alcohol Use Disorder (led by Prof. David Nutt), starts in Q4 2021. In addition to those plans, Awakn has a next-generation drug development program of patentable psychedelic medicines or ‘NCEs’ (New Chemical Entities) targeting addiction, research led by Prof. David Nutt, Dr. Shaun McNulty, and Prof. Celia Morgan.
