to Commence Landmark Clinical Trial - First multiple-dose psilocybin clinical trial will be conducted at Braxia Health's Canadian Rapid Treatment Centers
- Trial will include adults with treatment-resistant depression and will also enroll adults who have previously tried electroconvulsive therapy and/or intravenous ketamine
TORONTO, Aug. 27, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Braxia Scientific Corp. ("Braxia Scientific", or the "Company"), (CSE: BRAX) (OTC: BRAXF) (FWB: 496), a medical research company with clinics providing innovative ketamine treatments for persons with depression and related disorders, is pleased to announce Braxia Scientific's clinical research and development team will commence a randomized clinical trial (RCT) using psilocybin.
"This will be the broadest study of its kind," said Dr. Joshua Rosenblat, the trial's principal investigator and medical director of the Canadian Rapid Treatment Centre of Excellence Inc. (CRTCE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Braxia Scientific.
"Whereas most other treatment-resistant depression (TRD) studies limit participation to patients that have not found relief from a maximum of five other potential remedies, our research will not have an upper limit, and will even include patients that have endured dozens of unsuccessful medical trials, including ketamine and electroconvulsive therapy.
"By including everyone with more than two failed medical trials, we are increasing the degree to which the results can be applied to a larger population, making our findings much stronger. Furthermore, we will have less exclusion criteria and are even including patients with bipolar depression – a huge first for the field – or comorbid disorders, which were excluded in psilocybin studies done by other companies."
Braxia Scientific CEO Dr. Roger McIntyre added, "Integrating psilocybin provides immense opportunity for benefit for those dealing with treatment-resistant depression. Unfortunately, over one-third of the more than 300 million people suffering with depression worldwide fail to adequately respond to currently approved treatments, and thus the TRD market is very large and disproportionately dominates the majority of mental health services."
The study will demonstrate that the Company can effectively conduct a randomized controlled trial using psychedelic-assisted therapy. This will enable the Company to build the infrastructure for future studies and future clinical care, while also compiling efficacy data and providing the opportunity to evaluate the therapist training program launched at the end of June 2021.
This program run by the Braxia Institute, the Company's training centre focused on advancing psychiatric clinical practice and health services of ketamine and psychedelic treatment therapy, has already cultivated a multi-disciplinary group of 20 therapists from diverse psychiatry and psychotherapy backgrounds to implement safe and effective psilocybin-assisted therapy for patients with depression.
Today's announcement is the latest step in Braxia Scientific developing the next generation of novel psychedelic treatments and delivery systems through its network of clinics.