When we founded atai Life Sciences in 2018, mental health drug development was an afterthought for Big Pharma. Challenges such as subjective clinical endpoints, complex biology, and high failure rates pushed many pharma away. Meanwhile, patient demand skyrocketed, leaving a massive innovation gap and patients behind. Over the last two years, the tide is fortunately turning. Bristol Myers Squibb’s $14B acquisition of Karuna Therapeutics and Johnson & Johnson $15B deal for Intra-Cellular Therapies signal a resurgence of interest. And in addition, private investments in biotechs active in mental health drug development have significantly increased (see graph in article). It's encouraging to see the @WSJ and @david_wainer covering Psychedelics as a key innovation catalyst in mental health that is gaining traction. Given the number of Phase 2 and Phase 3 clinical trial readouts this year, the next 12 months will be super interesting to watch. The past decade has proven that breakthroughs come from those willing to challenge the status quo. Great to see that investors and big pharma players are paying more and more attention to the huge unmet patient needs in mental health and making moves to again allocate significant amounts of capital to neuroscience given the progress made over the last years. See here for the full article: wsj.com/tech/biotech/big-pha… #mentalhealth #neurosciecne #psychedelics #drugdevelopment #BigPharma