With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1425269
SPORES – Microscopic "seeds" released by a mush- room that germinate to grow a new mycelium ISTOCK of 2021. "We wanted to come up with a vehicle to provide access to the industry, which we estimate to be a $100-billion mar- ket opportunity," says Origin CEO Alexan- der Somjen. The public appears to be on board, at least for certain uses. In a recent national survey by the Canadian Psychedelic Asso- ciation, 82 percent of respondents said they approved of psilocybin-assisted therapy for people suffering from an end-of-life illness, and 78 percent said they'd support a gov- ernment that legalized psilocybin-assisted therapy to improve the quality of life for pal- liative and end-of-life patients. Psilocybin has been prohibited in Can- ada since 1975. But just last year, Health Canada started using its authority to grant legal exemptions, mostly to people with terminal illness and treatment- resistant depression. After raising $6.5 million in August to fund investment in the sector, Origin has already deployed about a third of that total with five different businesses. "Retail inves- tors often don't have access to these companies when they're in the proof-of-concept stage," Somjen says. "We're also really passionate about providing growth capital to companies in the psychedelic space that are combating mental health." In February of this year, another Va ncouver compa ny, O pt i m i Health, completed an oversub- scribed $20.7 million IPO and listed on the CSE. The company, slated to start selling both functional and psychedelic mushrooms in early 2022, has a 20,000-square-foot complex in Princeton. "It's set up to be, as far as I know, the largest state-of-the-art psychedelic mush- room cultivation facility in Canada, if not the world," says chief market- ing officer Dane Stevens. It's saying something that Ste- vens, co-founder and president of Vancouver's Cavalier Jewelers, is a relative business lightweight com- pared to other names on Optimi's 15-member team. They include advisers Chip Wilson, founding CEO of Lululemon Athletica; and Edward Safarik, founder and former presi- dent and CEO of Ocean Fisheries. NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 BCBUSINESS 35 Spore Speak New to the mushroom game? Here are some terms you should know PSILOCYBIN – The hal- lucinogenic compound found in magic mush- rooms. Studies have shown that it can treat conditions like depres- sion and post-traumatic stress disorder ( PTSD) MYCELIUM – The branched, tubular filaments that make up the body of a fungus FRUITING BODY – The reproductive structure of a fungus, most recognizable as the cap, gills and stem of a mushroom "The same thing happened with can- nabis; the big growers came out early, and a lot of people start to follow," Stevens says. "We're an aggressive group," he adds. "We noticed right away that the market was growing at about an 8-percent annual compound rate. Canadian-grown mushrooms aren't really being done locally en masse." N A T U R A L P O W E R S The bigger names in the industry, like Atai and U.K.-based Compass Pathways, don't use natural products at all. Instead, they've turned to synthetic compounds to create their offerings. But that isn't how the smaller Canadian companies joining the fray—Optimi and Eversio included—are doing business. "How many people take synthetic caf- feine?" asks Ben Lightburn, co-founder and CEO of Vancouver's Filament Health. "How many people are clamouring for more arti- ficial food dye?" Like so many of its cohorts, Filament went public recently, listing on the NEO Exchange in June. The company, which has 10 employees working in its lab on BCIT's Burnaby campus, focuses on the treatment of mental health conditions by discovering and delivering all-natural psy- chedelic medicines. Filament has already received the first patent issued for the extraction of natural psilocybin, under the leadership of Light- burn, previously CEO of Delta-based plant extraction company Mazza Innovation. (U.S. manufacturer Sensient Technologies bought Mazza in 2018.) Lightburn and some other former Mazza executives teamed up to make their mark in the burgeoning industry. "What we've found in our analysis of the over 20 strains we've looked at is the amount of psi- locybin can vary as much as five times, and the amount in mushrooms from the same batch can vary," Lightburn says. "Not a problem if you're taking mush- rooms recreationally with your friend on the weekend. But if you're trying to address a specific mental health concern, or treat- ment for a specific medication, it's very important to have a precise dose." To that end, Filament has been running clinical trials at the University of Califor- nia, San Francisco, to try to turn the raw materials into a pharmaceutical extract. "One of the trials that we're running con- tains a compound that we've identified in SOURCES: BRITANNICA.COM, GOVERNMENT OF B.C.