Delix Therapeutics is a pharmaceutical startup that develops non-hallucinogenic, therapeutic psychedelic compounds. Led by neuroscientist and professor Dr. David Olson, Delix emerged from the work of the Olson Lab at UC Davis. The company’s website states that it “is rapidly advancing these compounds through preclinical and clinical development, with the goal of one day alleviating mental suffering through its FDA-approved, take-home medicines.” In an interview with NPR, Dr. Olson described the goals of Delix and its partnership with the Olson Lab, saying,
What we need is a medicine that is so safe that you can take it home and put it in your medicine cabinet just like you would aspirin. And that’s really what we were trying to achieve.
Delix is the proprietor of tabernanthalog, a non-hallucinogenic analog of ibogaine formulated by Lindsay Cameron and a research team at the Olson Lab.1 Psychedelic Science Review described the associated study which was published in December 2020. In the interview with NPR, Dr. Olson explained that to create the tabernanthalog, the researchers “lopped off the parts of the structure that gave rise to a lot of the deleterious effects, and…left the part of the structure intact that still was able to have anti-addictive and antidepressant properties.” The discovery also earned coverage by UC Davis News, Sacramento Business Journal, and Chemical & Engineering News.