CALGARY, AB, March 4, 2021 /CNW/ – MagicMed Industries Inc. (CSE: MGIC reserved) (“MagicMed” or the “Company“) announced today a collaboration among the Company, Dr. Suran Goonatilake and Dr. Eric Nyberg, renowned thought leaders in artificial intelligence (“AI“). Together the parties are building PsyAITM, a tool designed to provide comprehensive, pharmaceutical design, manufacturing, pharmacology predictive and validating methodologies in an effort to modernize psychedelic medicine.
The standard pharmaceutical candidate screening process is a consistent bottleneck in bringing standard pharmaceutical candidates to market and acts as a primary determinant of eventual clinical success or failure. This paradigm is particularly challenging in the psychedelics pharmaceutical sector, owing to a limited understanding of the mechanisms underlying observed clinical data. Similarly, the correlation between the actual physical structure of psychedelic agents and patient outcomes is unknown. The strict regulatory regimes in place for the last five decades have only recently been relaxed and have inhibited critical basic research in this sector and put the already challenging drug development process at an even greater disadvantage.
Combining PsyAITM and the PsybraryTM, MagicMed’s large-scale novel molecule creation platform, creates an opportunity to accelerate the development of optimized pharmaceutical candidates, each tailored specifically for difficult-to-treat mental health indications.
MagicMed’s Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Peter Facchini, stated, “It is an exceptional opportunity, and indeed and honour, to be allayed with two internationally respected thought leaders in AI, upholding the Company’s core tenet of engaging with industry leaders. Dr. Suran Goonatilake and Dr. Eric Nyberg, whose ground-breaking developments have helped shaped aspects of AI for decades, have agreed to join us in solving a fundamental challenge: the quest to develop new therapies for devastating mental health conditions”.
Dr. Suran Goonatilake, Visiting Professor, UCL Centre for Artificial Intelligence, and co-founder of April 19 Discovery Inc., has a track record in developing new AI methods and applying them to address some of the world’s hardest problems. Through his PhD research in intelligent hybrid systems, he co-founded SearchSpace (acquired by Warburg Pincus), one of the world’s first AI platforms to detect complex patterns in financial transactions ranging from insider-dealing detection at stock exchanges to money laundering detection at retail banks. Dr. Goonatilake commented, “2021 is an exciting point in history. Three major disciplines are converging: AI-driven drug-discovery, synthetic biology and the ‘psychedelic renaissance’ to treat mental health conditions. It’s very exciting to be at the nexus of this convergence.”
He added, “I am honoured to collaborate with Dr. Nyberg to take MagicMed’s library of psychedelic compounds – PsybraryTM – and apply deep-learning methods to move them along the pipeline towards APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients). We believe that every AI module increases the value of a compound as a potential therapeutic by leveraging AI systems to replace human scientists and thereby reducing the time and cost to bring a therapeutic to market.”
Dr. Eric Nyberg, Chief Data Scientist at Cognistx (Cognistx.com) and Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, was a member of the original IBM Watson development team and also developed scalable architecture for multi-strategy question-answering systems. Dr. Nyberg stated, “It is my view that the need in society has never been greater for great minds to come together and pool resources to solve a serious and growing problem in society. I am pleased to have the opportunity to collaborate with Dr. Goonatilake and MagicMed, to build upon a classification and clustering matrix and ultimately deploy a tier-based model that designs structures, optimizes synthesis processes, and predicts biophysical properties from receptor binding and pharm/tox through to patient outcomes in distinct clinical indications. I believe that the need for, and thus value of, the development of this new tool we are building to revolutionize the psychedelic medicine sector cannot be overstated.”
Drs. Goonatilake’s and Nyberg’s contributions will be delivered through their AI companies, April 19 Discovery Inc. and Cognistx, respectively.
PsyAITM, PsybraryTM, MagicMedTM, and MagicMed IndustriesTM are trademarks of MagicMed Industries Inc., submitted for registration in the USA and Canada.
About MagicMed
MagicMed Industries intends to partner with pharmaceutical and other companies to develop and commercialize psychedelic-derived pharmaceutical candidates. MagicMed’s psychedelic derivatives library, the PsybraryTM, is anticipated to be an essential building block from which industry can develop new patented products. The initial focus of the PsybraryTM is on psilocybin and DMT derivatives, and it is then expected to be expanded to other psychedelics such as MDMA, LSD, mescaline, and ibogaine.
About Cognistx
Founded in 2015, Cognistx is a Pittsburgh-based applied AI company, building multi-strategy AI systems for clients across the U.S. Cognistx create AI-powered computer systems that can sense, learn, and act. The company founders are pioneers in the fields of automatic question-answering, speech processing, computer vision, natural language processing (NLP), and applied machine learning. The team at Cognistx is able to efficiently combine and customize the best advanced technologies- their AI building blocks – to create applications that extract meaningful insights to produce measurable impacts for their clients. Visit Cognistx.com
About April 19 Discovery Inc.
April 19 is an AI-driven drug-discovery company entirely focused on developing and screening novel compounds for psychedelic medicine. The ‘psychedelic renaissance’ promises to provide much needed therapies to treat depression, PTSD, anxiety, addiction cessation and other mental health conditions. Salina is a division of April 19 that is developing AI-driven biomarkers (e.g. EEG analytics) to automatically detect adverse events (e.g. cardiac arrests) to increase safety in this emerging industry. A long-term goal is to fundamentally change the economics of this new sector by reducing clinical reliance on medical personnel and lower the cost-per-patient within FDA-approved treatment protocols. Visit www.april19.ai
MagicMed Industries Inc.
Dr. Joseph Tucker
Chief Executive Officer
403-605-8747
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions and accordingly, actual results and future events could differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. You are hence cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of present or historical fact are forward-looking statements, including statements with respect to MagicMed’s future business plans and partnerships, management’s perception of both Dr. Suran Goonatilake and Dr. Eric Nyberg, their standing in the AI space and the impact their partnership may have on the Company, management’s views regarding the particular challenges in the psychedelics pharmaceutical sector, the anticipated effect that combining PsyAITM and the PsybraryTM will have and the proposed benefits to the psychedelics pharmaceutical sector and the anticipated uses of MagicMed’s patents and the development of the PsybraryTM. Forward-looking statements include words or expressions such as “proposed”, “anticipated”, “will”, “subject to”, “near future”, “in the event”, “would”, “expect”, “prepared to” and other similar words or expressions.
Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. Some of the risks and other factors could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements which include, but are not limited to: the ability of MagicMed to secure patent protection; the regulatory environment in which MagicMed operates; the ability of MagicMed to enter into partnership agreements or other arrangements; the ability of MagicMed to carry out its business plans (including but not limited to its plans to file a non-offering prospectus and apply to list on a stock exchange) and unforeseen challenges in carrying out such plans; the development and expansion of the PsybraryTM; trends in the future use of psilocybin; general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; the state of capital markets; risks relating to general economic, market and business conditions; and other unforeseen events, developments, or factors causing any of the aforesaid expectations, assumptions, and other factors ultimately being inaccurate or irrelevant. The forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. We disclaim any obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable law.
SOURCE MagicMed Industries Inc.
