Beckley PsyTech is a psychedelic pharmaceutical company based in Oxford, England. The company is a strategic partner of The Beckley Foundation, a nonprofit psychedelic research and advocacy organization founded by Lady Amanda Feilding. Beckley PsyTech was founded in 2019 by Feilding and CEO Cosmo Feilding Mellen — Feilding’s son.
As stated on its website, the company’s mission is to help “patients suffering from neurological and psychiatric disorders by developing a pipeline of psychedelic compounds into licensed pharmaceutical medicines.” Beckley PsyTech “will provide financial and technical support to develop the Foundation’s most promising research.”
Beckley’s drug research and development platform spans three categories: First, second, and third-generation psychedelic medicines. The first-generation drugs include “well-characterised psychedelics” such as psilocybin. This program is building on groundbreaking psilocybin brain-imaging research from Beckley Foundation and Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris from Imperial College London’s Centre for Psychedelic Research.
Second-generation drugs involve lesser-known, less-researched psychedelic compounds. Through this avenue, Beckley is developing synthetic 5-MeO-DMT for treatment-resistant depression. In April 2021, Feilding-Mellon told Forbes writer David E. Carpenter: “In 2020, we raised over $22 million in funding and developed an intranasal formulation of synthetic 5-MeO-DMT that’s set to be tested later this year. We’ll be breaking new ground with the first clinical study on intranasal 5-MeO-DMT, conducting an initial Phase 1 trial with 42 participants.” Beckley’s third-generation psychedelic drug development refers to the company’s work to design new chemical entities (NCEs).
In April 2020, Beckley PsyTech announced a partnership with Fluence, a psychedelic therapy training organization, to create a new clinician training program for the company’s 5-MeO-DMT work. In January 2021 the UK’s Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) authorized Beckley to begin Phase 1B clinical trials that explore psilocybin as a treatment for unilateral neuralgiform headache attacks (SUNHA). The rare disorder has no currently approved treatments.
In an article for the Journal of mHealth website, Beckley PsyTech Commercial Director Becky Hutchinson advocated for the integration of digital therapeutics into psychedelic treatments, writing: “We also believe that the future success of any new compounds coming to the market will depend on the ability to offer personalised care by ensuring technology is part of the compound development programme…We believe a hybrid model, with initial in-person psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy followed by ongoing treatment via a digital therapeutic, will deliver the most effective mental health treatment.”