About Entheon Biomedical Corp: Entheon is a biotechnology research and development company committed to developing and commercializing a portfolio of safe and effective Dimethyltryptamine based psychedelic therapeutic products (“DMT Products“) for the purposes of treating addiction and substance use disorders. Subject to obtaining all requisite regulatory approvals and permits, Entheon intends to generate revenue through the sale of its DMT Products to physicians, clinics and licensed psychiatrists in the United States, certain countries in the European Union and throughout Canada.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS:
WSA: Good day from Wall Street, this is Juan Costello Senior Analyst with the Wall Street Analyzer. Joining us today is Timothy Ko, CEO of Entheon Biomedical Corporation. The company now trades on the Canadian Securities Exchange, ENBI. Thanks for joining us today Timothy.
Timothy Ko: Absolutely Juan. Thank you for the opportunity.
WSA: Anytime, please start off by providing us there with an intro of the company.
Timothy Ko: Absolutely, so Entheon Biomedical is in the psychedelic drug discovery space. And what we’re trying to do is really invert the expectations around drug addiction. I think we understand as a society we’ve come to accept that people with sort of drug addictions are almost sort of dammed to a fate where the efficacy of conventional treatment models are so ineffective that it’s almost an act of faith or that these people may succumb to an untimely death.
And that’s the case. I lost my brother to drug addiction in March of last year. And before he became a statistic, he was actually a drug addict for 20 years, and of all the conventional models that were available to help my brother out, none of it really had an effect and that’s the medication route the psychotherapy route, as well as the residential treatment route. All those things are intended to create these sort of changes in belief, but ultimately a lot of drug users become treatment resistant. What we’re doing at Entheon is developing out a very pure and medically rigorous way of administering DMT continuously using continuous infusion. DMT is a massively powerful psychoactive molecule.
It’s the principal ingredient in Ayahuasca and Ayahuasca is for many people who know it’s the sort of the psychedelic jungle brew that’s been used by indigenous communities for millennia, and it’s used to treat a number of diseases of despair things with a psychological and emotional nature. So not being able to bring that organic jungle brew to a medical context what we at Entheon are doing are creating medically approved psychedelic drug treatment to target those core emotional and psychological issues that drive that to get the behavior. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re engaging in that rigorous drug development pathway using synthetic DMT for those purposes.
WSA: Well, I guess you have some experience with that yourself, just kind of reading your bio for the interview having gone through some trauma and using the DMT yourself.
Timothy Ko: Absolutely I think I have no shame in saying if that’s I like millions of other people, have had encounters with mental health. Ultimately, the household that created my brother also created me. And so there was some trauma issues, of course and about mental illness and, about seven or eight years ago, I actually found myself in a pretty high-intensity tipping point place where I was teetering on the edge of something.
And I was trying conventional methods of treating myself trauma therapies, EMDR lens wear a variety of things, but ultimately I found myself at a bit of a brick wall. Luckily someone brought DMT into my life and the experience was really telling and it really spoke to the potential of psychedelics as a cure for some of these things. It really did help break through some of those traumatic barriers that I was previously unable to access.
So I was unable to access certain memories, certain feelings and the science is beginning to find new language to describe it. But what ended up happening is that for the first time in seemingly 30 years of my life, I was actually able to access certain feelings, memories, attachments, really core emotional and psychological features and look at them differently. And then following the DMT, I was actually able to have new experiences around some pretty long held beliefs about my family, about my place in the world.
And it really did reformat how I approached life, how I perceived life. And we believe that as it applies to people’s drug addictions people who do have really sort of entrenched beliefs about themselves that ultimately do result in specific sets of habituated behavior that really disruptive potential of DMT is the cornerstone of what can be a useful therapeutic experience.
WSA: Right. Well, in terms of that, I guess some people do self-medicate, whether it be with, certain substances marijuana comes to mind, but in terms of your platform is it going to be something that you’re marketing it or trying to sell it kind of like as a dose, or is that going to come with like a certain therapy around it as well or how do you know basically a big guy versus a smaller person or male, female, or different people require different doses, different needs how do you address that.
Timothy Ko: Really good question. Each individual is so unique that to believe that a drug alone can do everything is we think it’s a bit of a fallacy. And so it being so important that everyone with a substance use disorder issue has very own specific traumas, very own specific attachments and features of their belief system. And so really crucial to the development of our drug product is consideration for all the supportive therapeutic infrastructure that goes before the actual drug experience as well as after the drug experience.
So we need to ensure that the therapeutic environment is set up in such a way that the individual patient is not only prepared for what is ultimately a very powerful experience, but has the adequate amount of time set so that they can establish what their individual barriers are what their individual intentions are, so that they can know what they’re operating on when they do go into the drug experience. And so we are working with people like Matthew Johnson, Robin Carhart Harris, that have some experience in terms of that intention setting all that preparatory work to really structure our protocols in such a way that does account for that absolute need for therapeutic support before and after.
WSA: I’m sure you’re going to get started regarding those trials, right?
Timothy Ko: Absolutely Yes. In terms of significant events coming up, we’re really excited to be going into our clinical trials, our human safety trials and estimated COVID dependent as all things in the world are Q2 of 2021. So necessary to getting us there is not just that we have an agreement signed with a very reputable, well-known drug research Institute in the Netherlands CHDR (Center for Human Drug Research). But also that we have, this being a regulated drug product, we needed GMP quality, pure synthetic drug material. We also have partnership with the Psygen labs out of Calgary, Alberta they’rethe only Health Canada certified manufacturer of DMT. And so those two things are absolutely crucial and we’re blessed to have those pieces in place and super excited to be moving forward with our human trials in 2021.
WSA: Sure. So in terms of that what are some of the regulatory challenges that you’re facing and, what are some of the trends that you’re seeing right now in the sector and what makes Entheon, uniquely qualified to stand up above the mass?
Timothy Ko: Absolutely. Psychedelics are often viewed they certainly do have their own cache, both the infamous, the mystical, it’s a sort of a grab bag in terms of how people perceive these things. Unfortunately we are contending with dispelling some of the rumors and misconceptions that were constructed in the at the washout results of the 60s and 70s where psychedelic use was sort of common and was maybe a societal force that was scary to regulators and their governments.
I think decades of seeing that as a misconception about the potential dangers of psychedelics of which there are a couple, I think we’re seeing a big groundswell of support across a bunch of different jurisdictions in the US as well as Canada that are calling for decriminalization of these molecules, specifically psychedelic molecules. Not only that, from perspective of consenting adults, having the right to ingest whatever things that they deem useful themselves, but also seeing a push towards the I guess the area of legalization in recognition of these molecules’ capacity to heal.
We exist in a niceconvergence of sort of dispelling of myths as well as seeing a sort of public call for access but supported by a growing wealth of evidence that psychedelics are not only are they not bad, but they show massive potential in actually [showing] in a foundationally absolutely sort of revolutionary way how we approach mental health. So a lot of the work done with Psilocybin by people like Matthew Johnson and to their credits are accomplished pathways is really showing an empirical way that sort of undeniable in terms of the how the regulators view it, that, yes, not only are these things not dangerous but they have a massive potential to help people.
So that dispelling of myth is occurring right now and it’s our job to engage in the rigorous but necessary drug regulation pathway that exists to ensure that assumption aside that we conduct the necessary trials and record data in an empirical way so that yes, from the perspective of the regulators that ensure safety that this ticks all the boxes that any other drug candidate would, that it is in fact safe and efficacious. And so those are one of the realities of bringing a drug product to market and we’re actually happy that it exists so that by the time it reaches the consumer they have full confidence that yes, these things are in fact safe.
WSA: Right, right. Well, I guess it’s kind of been considered in the past as anti-establishment, you’re going to take the drug, you’re going to rebel against society and I guess for every Terence McKenna taking a DMT seeing shamans in his mind and going into the forest, There’s also the kid that’s like 18 year old taking the DMT at a rave dancing all night and that sort of like pictures that you’ve got where I guess you read somewhere more in between of that.
Timothy Ko: We think so, yeah. Absolutely. I, for one in terms of decriminalization and people having access I think that consenting adults should certainly have access to things that they deem sort of useful or non-harmful to themselves. But yeah for us because we are targeting something that is of a highly medical nature and a really life-threatening nature drug addiction, the mortality rates around it are unconscionable. They are shocking and not just in the death statistics but the number of untreated suffers because these things are of a very urgent medical and potentially I guess mortal nature. The path that we’ve taken is to ensure that for a medical condition that we do sort of follow the rigor of creating a medical product and that’s precisely what we’re doing. But as far as decriminalization goes all boats float in a rising tide and so that sort of public support and demand for these things certainly does add to the chorus of people saying that we want a new perspective on these drugs.
WSA: Right. Well, when you have things such as alcoholism, depression, suicidal thoughts, especially nowadays with the epidemic people more at home, people have more time to think about themselves and their place in the world. With that being said, can you talk a little about what your revenue model will be?
Timothy Ko: Yeah, absolutely. So we are generating a drug product. Our human trials are centered around specific way that we dose DMT and deliver it and so ultimately we intend to have this within a very user-friendly usable technology that we will sell to physicians and practitioners that are licensed to administer these drugs and so we’ll ultimately be selling the drug delivery technology as well as the drug material that goes into this technology.
Those things are in development but for us the real important stuff is ensuring that the clinical trials start to go off without a hitch and that we’ve considered all aspects there. We’re also looking at other ways to generate revenue around that drug technology whether it’s value add sort of services that accompany or our core product which is the approved drug delivery and drug product.
WSA: So real briefly here, two more quick questions. I know you’ve got to jump off soon but in terms of your advisory board it kind of reads as the who’smwho of the psychedelic and that type of world. Can you talk a little bit about the team there that you have behind you?
Timothy Ko: Absolutely. Just to start the conversation off we are absolutely blessed to have the people that you’re mentioning our advisers. And so really early on, we understood that passion alone won’t get a drug product developing and out of abundance of humility and understanding that I know a few things in life but there are certainly far smarter people than me.
We really went out to the psychedelic research world and communicated our true intent which was Hey, there’s a big population of people that are absolutely being under-serviced by the current models that are available. You being the smartest people that are known would you like to commit to helping these people? And if so, what would you like to see developed into a drug product?
And so through an iterative process with people like Matthew Johnson from Johns Hopkins University, as well as Robbie Carhart Harris, Christopher Timmerman, and Mallon Hutodd from Imperial College of London, he said yeah our intention was to help people, help us find the best molecule and the best way to deliver it so that we can in the most sort of accessible way reach these people and give them the best shot of restructuring their lives in such a way that they don’t ultimately meet their end to overdose.
All of these people have been outside of just having them on the advisory board from a name recognition perspective. They have been integral in actually forming some of these specifics around how this is dosed, what the specifics around the therapeutic protocols are, and we’re eternally grateful for them.
WSA: Once again, we’re speaking with Timothy Ko, CEO of Entheon Biomedical Company which now trades on the Canadian securities exchange, ENBI currently trading at 52 cents a share Canadian. Before we conclude here Timothy, why do you believe investors should consider the company a good investment opportunity today?
Timothy Ko: Absolutely. There are a variety of things principle among, which is that ultimately the population that we’re trying to help with the product that we’re developing is absolutely under-serviced and it represents a massive opportunity. Not only that the pathway that we have selected is as difficult as it is it is a very well-known well thought pathway which is the sort of clinical drug discovery pathway.
And in life we think it’s sometimes rare but amazing when you can find it where there’s an opportunity to not only potentially invest in something for monetary gain but also from the perspective of having the double impact of actually reshaping how society has conducted itself and really changing some of the outcome expectations for some of the people that most need it.
And so we really think that the pathway that we’ve chosen makes a lot of sense with a lot of de-risking as we move through the clinical trials process. And there’s a real opportunity to service a massive population and in doing so really reshape society.
WSA: Well we certainly look forward to continuing to track the company’s growth and report on your up-coming progress and we would like to thank you for taking the time to join us today Timothy and introduce our audience to Entheon.
Timothy Ko: Wonderful Juan, thank you so much. And looking forward to speaking with you and your audience again soon.
