Awkan’s Chief Research Officer Prof David Nutt will chair both advisory boards with Prof Stephen Husbands, Prof Harriet De Wit, and Prof Kevin Fone joining the preclinical advisory board.

TORONTO, CANADA, 7^th JULY 2021 – Awakn Life Sciences Corp. (NEO: AWKN) (Awakn), a biotechnology company with clinical operations developing and delivering psychedelic medicines to better treat Addiction, announced today that it will establish separate preclinical and clinical expert advisory boards to add to its existing Scientific Advisory Board’s capabilities, to optimize delivery of its expanding development pipeline.

Both advisory boards will be led by Prof. David Nutt, Awakn’s Chief Research Officer and globally renowned neuroscientist and addiction researcher. Awakn’s new clinical and preclinical boards will ensure that Awakn adopts and delivers optimum strategies to bring new therapeutic paradigms to market rapidly. These pioneering boards consist of leading preclinical and clinical experts in the fields of drug discovery, psychedelic drug development and clinical trials. Awakn has recently expanded its pipeline significantly, moving to initiate Ketamine and MDMA clinical trials alongside its discovery and development of novel drug candidates for drug-assisted psychotherapy. Separation of the existing Board into preclinical and clinical Boards will facilitate focus to drive rapid progression of these activities in parallel. This will allow Awakn to build on its position and experience as a clinical phase biotechnology company to bring a range of novel innovative and targeted treatments against addictions to market.

Awakn is delighted to announce the addition of Prof. Stephen Husbands, Prof. Harriet de Wit, and Prof. Kevin Fone to the Preclinical Advisory board. Stephen, Harriet, and Kevin are leading experts in their disciplines, and bring outstanding medicinal chemistry, pharmacology and human experimental study expertise to Awakn’s research. They will be joined on this board by Shaun McNulty, Awakn’s Chief Scientific Officer and its chair Prof. David Nutt.

The Clinical Advisory Board will consist of Dr. Ben Sessa, Prof. Celia Morgan, Ann Mithoefer, Dr. Michael Mithoefer and Prof. Matt Johnson, all of which were already existing members of Awakn’s previously named ‘Scientific Advisory Board’. It will also be chaired by Prof. Nutt.

Professor Nutt commented; “Drug-assisted psychotherapy offers a new paradigm to treat patients with severe drug, alcohol, and behavioral addictions who are presently poorly served by inadequate treatments. Awakn has established two world leading teams each possessing proven deep expertise to drive both preclinical and clinical drug discovery activities. These teams will oversee Awakn’s strategy and data to ensure we deliver appropriately across our pipeline. It is my privilege to lead these teams to ensure that Awakn establishes and delivers our new therapies for the benefit of patients their families and the wider community.”      

Prof. Stephen Husbands

Professor Husbands is professor of medicinal chemistry in Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology at the University of Bath. His research has focused on the development and therapeutic potential of central nervous system targeted ligands, particularly those interacting with multiple receptors. His interests relate to neuropsychological diseases, in particular the development of low abuse liability analgesics and new treatment agents for drug abuse, depression and anxiety. He has more than 120 publications (including book chapters) and his work has been supported by national and international (NIH) funding agencies as well as industry. Prof Husbands’ work is highly interdisciplinary, and he collaborates and publishes with researchers around the world.

Prof. Harriet de Wit 

Professor de Wit obtained her PhD in Experimental Psychology from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, in 1981. Since then, she has been associated with the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago, where she is currently Professor and Director of the Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory. In addition to her role as Principal Investigator for several NIH-funded research projects, Prof. de Wit serves as Field Editor for the journal Psychopharmacology. She is a consultant to the Food and Drug Administration and serves on scientific advisory boards at other institutions. She has received awards for her research, including the Marian W. Fischman Memorial Lectureship Award in 2009, the European Behavioral Pharmacology Society Distinguished Investigator Award in 2019 and the Research Society on Alcoholism Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020.

Prof. Kevin Fone

Prof. Kevin Fone is the Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Nottingham. His research interests include improving our understanding of the neurobiological aetiology of common CNS disorders, such as schizophrenia, depression, PTSD and ADHD, and to help develop novel therapeutic treatment strategies for these. His research uses integrated physiology to investigate the functional role of 5-HT and dopamine in the CNS and to evaluate the impact of early-life interventions on brain development and behaviour. The fundamental approach is to concomitantly measure neurotransmitter function, neurochemistry and behaviour in paradigms designed to model CNS disorders. Kevin has benefited from extensive funding from Research Councils, EU consortiums, and many pharmaceutical companies from all over the world. He is a Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society, member of the scientific advisory board for the ECNP and has been President for both the International Society for Serotonin Research and the British Association for Psychopharmacology.

About Awakn Life Sciences Corp.

Awakn Life Sciences is a biotechnology company with clinical operations, researching, developing, and delivering psychedelic medicine to better treat Addiction. Awakn’s team consists of world leading chemists, scientists, psychiatrists, and psychologists who are developing and advancing the next generation of psychedelic drugs, therapies, and enabling technologies to treat Addiction. Awakn will also deliver evidence backed psychedelic therapies for Addiction in clinics in the UK and Europe and through licencing partnerships globally. 

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