Futurama: Psychedelics w/ Sher Ali Butt of CB Therapeutics
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Sher Ali Butt is the co-founder and CEO of CB Therapeutics, a company focused on producing high-value molecules, compounds, and rare ingredients from simple feedstock. CB Therapeutics' experience in synthetic genomics, bio-engineering, and cellular production processes have made them the first company in the world to produce (and file IP for) natural tryptamines and their analogs, in yeast. This process allows them to produce a broad range of compounds efficiently, sustainably, faster, at greater yields, and with higher purity and consistency than any other competitive platforms. Sher was formerly the co-founder and CSO of a Laboratory testing firm and has worked for a number of leading pharmaceutical and wellness product companies. Sher has a B.S. in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from UC Davis and an MBA from the Rady School of Management, UC San Diego. As of today, CB Therapeutics' team consists out of 19 employees, including 7 doctorate degree (Ph.D.) holders and 9 research associates. This team has advanced our proprietary yeasts formulation and production processes to become the market leader in the development of novel molecules.
A Snapshot: CB Therapeutics
Founding Date: May 2015
HQ: San Diego, United States
Founders: Jacob Vogan, Sher Ali Butt
Funding Raised: $7.6M
Notable Investors: Y Combinator, LYVC, Fort Ventures, Pioneer Fund, EvoNexus, Kingsley Advani
Stage: Series A
Substances: DMT, LSD, Psilocybin, MDMA, and other substances
CB Therapeutics is a leading biotech startup that has been able to use yeast, bacteria, and cell-free expression systems in the production of high-value molecules and therapeutic compounds. After 4 years of research and development, Sher and Jacob caught on to the therapeutic potential of psychedelic compounds and cannabinoids for the treatment of depression, PTSD, anxiety, addiction, and other mental health conditions. CB Therapeutics taps into this potential by producing these compounds more rapidly, utilizing fewer resources at greater yields and with higher purity than other players in the market. Over the past 2 years, they have achieved several breakthroughs in the biosynthesis of a variety of compounds and are building a platform to repeat this process at scale. To date, CB Therapeutics has developed a large and fully licensed commercial batch facility, including research labs and a production facility.
Breakthroughs:
December 2019: CB Therapeutics successfully biosynthesized Psilocybin typically found in plants and fungi and has filed a patent for the production process. These analog compounds are very similar to their natural counterparts and may prove to be more effective, targeted, and safer for therapeutic purposes.
April 2020: CB Therapeutics is awarded a patent for its Bioinformatics platform for the creation and annotation of libraries of biosynthetic pathway genes from next-generation sequencing data. The software allows them to process raw biological data and search for new enzymes in an unlimited number of data sets simultaneously.
April 2020: CB Therapeutics enters into a collaboration agreement with Cleveland Clinic for the manufacture of Psilocybin, DMT, and MDMA therapeutic compounds for clinical trials to treat depression, addiction, and PTSD.
June 2020: CB Therapeutics successfully biosynthesized DMT in yeast and has filed a patent for the production process. The analysis of raw analytical DMT samples has shown the biosynthetic process to be significantly more efficient, of higher purity, and less expensive than existing chemical and biosynthetic techniques, extraction from plants, or other production methods.
September 2020: CB Therapeutics achieves a major breakthrough, having been able to refine its in-house downstream processing, allowing for a 99.6% pure CBC, which is a rare cannabinoid molecule. By doing so, CB proved that it is able to drive down the cost of purification in parallel with increasing the purity to over 99%. The process is patent-pending.
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