Albert Labs receives Health Canada License and joins the list of Special Access Programme (SAP) providers, and Numinus is approved to treat the first patient in Quebec in partnership with Psygen
Vancouver-based Albert Labs has been granted a Health Canada license, allowing the production, possession and delivery of psilocybin and other psychoactive compounds. In their most recent press release, Albert Labs’ CEO, Dr. Michael Raymont, highlighted the significance of obtaining this license and becoming a Health Canada approved SAP provider: “With this license, we now have the flexibility to produce and supply precursor APIs to our own operations in Europe and to explore sales to other customers in Canada and elsewhere.”
Albert Labs is also progressing its clinical program to treat unmet mental health conditions, with an initial focus on treating cancer patients with severe depression and anxiety.
Patients such as Christine Parlee, who has stage IV terminal cancer, found enormous relief from psilocybin therapy: “To say it changed me down to the very bottom of my core is putting it mildly”, she explained. Experts believe it will be a couple of years before these potential breakthroughs become licensed medicines. Albert Labs, however, is working to expedite these timelines through their Real World Evidence trials soon to be conducted in the UK.
The positive news regarding Albert Labs comes in the same week that the first patient has been approved to be treated via Health Canada’s Special Access Program (SAP) in Quebec. The SAP allows health-care experts to request access to restricted drugs not yet authorized for sale in Canada. Dr. Andrew Bui-Nguyen of the Mindspace by Numinus clinic said in a recent interview, “It’s a privilege to be able to accompany people in the exploration of their psychological distress and to offer something different than conventional treatment such as antidepressants,”. Dr Bui-Nyugen’s clinic received Health Canada’s approval on May 5th to care for a patient who had undergone several unsuccessful treatments for depression.
Numinus, whose psilocybin is being provided by Psygen, also received approval for Health Canada’s SAP, representing its first psilocybin-assisted therapy treatment outside of ongoing clinical trials. “I am proud that Numinus is working with Health Canada to help Canadians with mental health challenges in ways that were not previously available, including using psilocybin-assisted therapy through Health Canada’s SAP,” says Payton Nyquvest, Founder and CEO of Numinus. “The SAP recognizes a growing body of research that has consistently shown the efficacy of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to treat a broad range of mental health conditions that are extremely difficult to treat with conventional therapies. We hope that our first psilocybin-assisted therapy treatment is the beginning of more opportunities for Canadian patients to obtain safe access to treatment and care in the mental health sector through psychedelic medicine.”
At the beginning of the year, Psygen received a dealers licence from Health Canada
to become Canada’s first dedicated psychedelics manufacturing facility. The Calgary-based company is now authorized to manufacture, sell, import, export, and work with controlled substances, including LSD, MDMA, psilocybin, psilocin, DMT, 2C-B, and mescaline. “Our dealers license [was] issued following a perfect inspection, meaning we had zero observations from the inspector, which is indicative of the diligence and skill that Psygen brings to our work”, said Danny Motyka, Psygen’s CEO, in a press release from earlier in the year. It’s no wonder then that Numinus has chosen Psygen to provide their psilocybin to treat patients via the SAP.
Canada has created a favorable regulatory environment for licensing psilocybin. Accelerating access to mental health treatments is long overdue, and psilocybin is showing enormous promise in becoming the catalyst for this revolution. A recent study conducted by researchers at Imperial College featured 60 people with varying degrees of depression. The results revealed that people who responded to psilocybin-assisted therapy showed increased brain connectivity not only during their treatment, but up to three weeks afterwards. This “opening up” effect was associated with self-reported improvements in their depression.
With scientific data continuing to show psychedelics’ potential as a breakthrough in mental health treatment, it’s important to have regulatory environments that support these crucial advancements.