Mind Medicine

MindMed was founded in May 2019 by Jamon A. Rahn, an entrepreneur, Y-Combinator alumnus, and former Uber executive, and Stephen Hurst, a 35-year veteran of the pharmaceutical industry. Rahn, who was interested in the Silicon Valley trend of psychedelic microdosing to improve focus after struggling with his own mental health and addiction issues, spent two years researching the therapeutic potential of psychedelics prior to meeting Hurst.MindMed initially focused on developing treatments for opioid withdrawal and opioid use disorder with 18-MC, a non-hallucinogenic molecule based on the psychedelic substance Ibogaine. In June 2019 it acquired the 18-MC drug development program, previously funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and in September began to prepare 18-MC for a Phase I FDA clinical trial to enable further clinical trials targeting opioid withdrawal and opioid use disorder. Psychopharmacologist Stanley Glick, who first synthesized 18-MC with chemist Martin E. Kuehne, was later named to MindMed's board of directors and appointed chair of its scientific advisory board.MindMed was the first psychedelic pharmaceutical company to go public, listing on the Canadian NEO Exchange under the symbol "MMED" and trading OTCQB as MMEDF. It began trading on NASDAQ as MNMD in April 2021.