Enveric Reports Positive Step For Its Fast-acting Psilocybin Drug

Enveric Biosciences (NASDAQ: ENVB) announced the successful completion of preclinical ADME and toxicology studies for its lead candidate EB-373.

EB-373

EB-373, is defined as a New Chemical Entity or NCE. According to the company it is designed as a next-generation proprietary psilocin prodrug and developed leveraging the company’s Psybrary drug discovery platform to target anxiety disorders. In preclinical studies, EB-373 demonstrated a quick response to psilocin both in vitro and when orally administered. For example, when mice were treated with EB-373 and given a marble burying test, which is used to test animal anxiety, the mice exhibited less anxiety and it lasted for seven days after the test was initiated.

The new in vitro tests confirmed the previous mice tests. The company said in a statement that tests using liver extracts derived from human, dog, rat, and mouse models “demonstrated efficient conversion of EB-373 to active metabolite psilocin, with consistent results across all species. Preclinical results for EB-373 have consistently shown rapid achievement of peak psilocin concentration in the blood at levels >95% that of the parent prodrug, indicating the almost complete conversion of EB-373 to psilocin by the liver.”

“These ADME and toxicology data help us further understand and confirm our molecular design success as we seek to harness the neuroplastogenic properties of psilocin while offering a potential treatment that better controls the hallucinatory effects in humans,” said Joseph Tucker, Ph.D., Director and CEO of Enveric. “With these in vitro analyses, in addition to our animal PK studies, we are building a robust pharmaceutical profile as we progress EB-373 to human testing in clinical trials.”

“We are increasingly confident that EB-373 has the potential to be well tolerated with a side effect profile that improves on psilocybin,” added Dr. Tucker. “Evident in its emerging PK parameters and safety profile, EB-373 appears to have realized the desirable properties of being rapidly converted to the active metabolite psilocin, followed by rapid elimination from the body, allowing for a potentially significant reduction in the overall length of the hallucinatory experience, and resulting in an improved therapeutic option for patients.”