Interview with Transcend Therapeutics CEO Blake Mandell

My father's PhD advisor at Harvard was Timothy Leary, so I've always had an interest in psychedelics.  After decades in the regulatory wilderness,  psychedelic products like MDMA are now being developed to treat mental health disorders.

But if these drugs are approved there will be a new problem: patient access. The treatments generally require many hours of highly trained mental health provider time per patient. That's not going to scale.

Blake Mandell is CEO of Transcend Therapeutics, which seeks to address these challenges with a non-hallucinogenic MDMA analogue. That should mean much less need for clinical supervision of patients and should also take away patient concerns about tripping.

Host David E. Williams is president of healthcare strategy consulting firm Health Business Group. Produced by Dafna Williams.