Robert Barrow, Chief Executive Officer and Board Director of Mind Medicine (MindMed) Inc. (NASDAQ:MNMD)
Robert Barrow is the Chief Executive Officer and Board Director of Mind Medicine (MindMed) Inc.
Mr. Barrow is an accomplished pharmaceutical executive and clinical pharmacologist with over a decade of experience leading drug development programs in a variety of disease areas.
After joining MindMed as Chief Development Officer in January 2021, he was named CEO in June 2021.
Mr. Barrow previously served as Director of Drug Development & Discovery at Usona Institute, where he oversaw preclinical, clinical and regulatory development efforts for all of Usona’s development programs.
Prior to joining Usona, Mr. Barrow served as Chief Operating Officer of Olatec Therapeutics, LLC, a private, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, where he oversaw the execution of numerous early- and late-stage clinical trials in the fields of analgesics, rheumatology, immunology and cardiovascular disease.
In addition, he has been responsible for the design and execution of preclinical research programs for new molecular entity drugs in brain health disorders.
Mr. Barrow has also served as both a technical and business adviser to numerous pharmaceutical organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies.
Mind Medicine (MindMed) Inc. (NASDAQ:MNMD) has an ambitious agenda.
“When we look back at historical evidence and look at the mechanism of action, we believe there is an opportunity to impact a wide range of brain health disorders. I believe the opportunity is really vast. There’s such a common thread across many of these indications.
Our lead program, which is MM-120, our proprietary form of LSD, we’re developing for generalized anxiety disorder. And we’re doing so with psychedelics in sort of the traditional sense where we give a perception-altering dose in a clinical setting under observation.
The extraordinary promise of this use case is that we’re seeing after just acute intervention, many weeks or even months of clinical benefit in reducing symptoms of anxiety.
But we’re also exploring innovative treatment paradigms with this drug class. So we’re looking at sub-hallucinogenic doses of MM-120 in ADHD and other alternative approaches that we believe have been overlooked by the field.
Our other lead program, which is MM-402, the R- enantiomer of MDMA. We’re developing it to target core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder. The analogy we like to draw is that the way psychostimulants are used to treat ADHD, is how we envision R(-)-MDMA being used in autism — to enable enhanced social communication for individuals with autism.
We believe that there’s an opportunity that spans beyond just where we’re looking today.
But our furthest along program, one that is coming very quickly up to a clinical readout later this year is our MM-120 or LSD program in generalized anxiety disorder…”
Mind Medicine (MindMed) Inc. (NASDAQ:MNMD) is conducting the largest experiments on humans with LSD since the CIA in the 60’s.
“We announced the completion of enrollment in our Phase IIb trial.
This is the largest modern study of LSD, and maybe perhaps the largest study of LSD ever conducted, certainly in a well-controlled setting.
It’s roughly 200 patients.
We dosed 198 patients in the study and follow them up for 12 weeks.
Our study includes five different arms, so it’s also the most comprehensive assessment of dose response in the entire drug class to date.
We expect to have a really clear indication of the activity of the drug acutely and over the course of four weeks where the primary endpoint is, then out to 12 weeks where our secondaries are in the study.
We believe that this will give us such an important insight into our development program.
And given that long history of research with the drug class, it also gives us a lot of clarity as we think about subsequent phases of development, engagement with FDA for a potential End of Phase II meeting, and really charting a path from the conclusion of the study to ultimately through a pivotal program, and hopefully to a marketing application one day.”
Mind Medicine (MindMed) Inc. (NASDAQ:MNMD) LSD trials are testing a variety of dose delivery systems.
“…With our MM-120 program and going forward to subsequent development, we’ll be using Catalent Zydis orally-dissolving tablet, or Zydis ODT platform. They are ultra-rapidly disintegrating tablets that almost instantaneously disperse when they’re put in the mouth.
Our aim is to generate a differentiated profile of the product that can perform better, that has better pharmaceutical characteristics, that potentially has even more attractive pharmacokinetics.
When we think of some of the unique challenges and opportunities with this drug class and with historical formulations of LSD, we saw a real window to make significant improvements, to have a product that is both differentiated, that can help us protect our market and into the future, but also most importantly to perform as best as possible for patients to make sure that we’re providing a dosage form that really meets modern standards and that can be scalable and delivered out in a normal fashion.”
Mind Medicine (MindMed) Inc. (NASDAQ:MNMD) has a potential addressable universe of 10% of the population with its LSD formulas.
“…Certainly one of the biggest things we’ve seen, there’s a recent study looking at the prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder.
Prior to the study, the belief was the prevalence of GAD was just over 3%.
And the most recent study indicates that the prevalence is actually more like 10%.
So I think the willingness to talk about it for many people, really worldwide, to go through a very challenging period of time both add strain on mental health and mental health care, and also gave people time to reflect and as a society, time to look at the stresses that were imposed both by the pandemic and all that that’s around modern life.
Of course, we aim to alter the trajectory of the mental health epidemic in this country and around the world.
But the reality is that the increase in anxiety and depression levels, the reality of increased screening for anxiety, which is now recommended for all adolescents and adults by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, has really shined a light on the severity of the problem.
I think when we look at the magnitude of the kind of impact we could have, it is enormous — which is of course a sad reality both societally and for all of those patients — but we believe it’s the right time for innovative new products and that there is such an urgent need that we can hopefully impact at a massive scale.”
Read the entire interview with the CEO of Mind Medicine (MindMed) Inc. (NASDAQ:MNMD) to get all the details on the LSD application for official pharmaceutical use.
Recommended Reading – Open letter to Stephen Elop, Nokia’s new CEO: How to make Nokia great again, RCR Wireless
September 29, 2010
Company Creates Exoskeleton to Allow the Paralyzed to Walk Again: ReWalk Robotics Ltd. (NASDAQ:RWLK)
July 18, 2018
EasyJet Goes Outside The Box Again for A CEO
March 24, 2010
Annual Executive Turnover on The Rise Again – Good Sign
January 18, 2013
