2023-09-27 22:53:46
Psilocybin, mescaline and DMT: welcome to Cubed Biotech, a Montreal laboratory that cultivates magic mushrooms and synthesizes psychedelic substances with the aim of making pills sold at convenience stores.
• Read also: Do the magic mushrooms you eat grow on feces?
The company’s founder, Adam Coape-Arnold, welcomes us in a large office that looks like a trendy start-up in a discreet building in the industrial district of Dollard-Des-Ormeaux, in the west of Montreal. With the exception of small mushroom trinkets placed here and there, nothing suggests that on the lower floor there is a magic mushroom laboratory where a real revolution is taking place. And yet.
In the coming months, around 200 kg of hallucinogenic mushrooms will be grown on site. It is the equivalent of 2 kg of psilocybin, the best-known psychoactive element in magic mushrooms which acts on perception, mood and sensations.
The exceptional permit that Cubed Biotech obtained from Health Canada allows it to produce a total of 3 kg legally.
“The objective is to extract and synthesize the psychotropic substances contained in mushrooms to make standardized pills which provide the same effects each time they are taken. My hope is that in 5 years, people will be able to have access to microdoses at the convenience store around their home,” he explains, heading towards the laboratory.
Photo Gabriel Ouimet
A “Hill Billy Super Squad” strain magic mushroom grown at Cubed Biotech.
Mushrooms from floor to ceiling
Bulletproof glass, safe, facial recognition, motion detection and decontamination system: following passing through security devices and long, immaculately white corridors, Adam Coape-Arnold pushes open the door of the mushroom farm.
“Welcome to the jungle,” he says, referring to the famous rock song of the same name.
A smell of mushrooms hangs in the room. In front of him, the walls are lined with culture bags and different specimens of varying shapes and colors. “I don’t want to be witty, but there’s definitely something special regarding this environment. We feel that they are alive,” says the entrepreneur.
Photo Gabriel Ouimet
Several grow bags containing different varieties of hallucinogenic mushrooms on the premises of Cubed Biotech.
It is in this sterile environment that Cubed Biotech growers attempt to create the perfect conditions to grow powerful mushrooms as quickly as possible. The innovative techniques used in the Montreal laboratory make it possible to obtain unique prototypes that would not be found in nature, indicates Mr. Coape-Arnold, opening a culture bag placed on the metal table in front of him.
He gives the example of a mushroom of the Penis Envy strain, usually wearing an orange-red cap, completely devoid of its characteristic color. The specimen called APE (Albino Penis Envy), entirely white, is also more powerful than the mushrooms that grow in nature.
“It’s like trading camouflage for power,” says Adam Coape-Arnold.
Photo Gabriel Ouimet
Hallucinogenic mushrooms dry in the Cubed Biotech laboratory in Montreal.
Many of Cubed Biotech’s mushrooms will be dehydrated and ground into a fine powder. Their psychoactive components will then be extracted using alcohol in a complex process reminiscent of distillation. The concentrate obtained will finally be purified then transformed into a tablet or liquid with therapeutic properties.
• Read also: We better understand how ayahuasca modifies the brain
DMT and mescaline
There are not only mushrooms in the laboratory in western Montreal.
After the mushroom farm, Adam Coape-Arnold takes us to “the playground” of Pavol Tuna, the company’s medical chemist.
“At the moment, I’m trying to reduce the mescaline, but it’s only half working,” breathes the young scientist who recently arrived from the Czech Republic as he opens his door for us.
Photo Gabriel Ouimet
Pavol Tuna attempts to reduce mescaline in his laboratory.
Mescaline is a hallucinogenic element contained in Peyote, a small spineless cactus that grows in the southern United States and Mexico. Its effects are essentially the same as those of LSD, but less powerful, according to the site Toxquébec.com.
Photo Gabriel Ouimet
A concentrate of mescaline
Pavol Tuna wants to recreate psilocybin, mescaline, or even DTM – the powerful hallucinogen contained in ayahuasca vines – in its purest possible form. This is an essential step for Cubed Biotech, which wants to produce tablets with these substances that meet the standards of the pharmaceutical world.
Photo Gabriel Ouimet
Pavol Tuna showing concentrate of the amanita muscaria mushroom.
Potentially revolutionary drugs
Alcoholism, depression, post-traumatic syndrome, fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s, chronic pain: the spectrum of illnesses or conditions on which psychedelics seem to have beneficial effects is expanding with the scientific research devoted to them.
Adam Coape-Arnold is convinced that the natural origin of the products he plans to market will allow him to stand out in the global market for psychedelic drugs, estimated at $8 billion by 2026.
“Unlike other promising but artificial molecules, such as MDMA, natural psychedelics do not have addictive potential, in addition to having fewer side effects,” he says.
Cubed Biotech’s drugs might thus end up replacing traditional antidepressants “which must be taken continuously and which cause many side effects”, hopes the businessman.
His company already collaborates with McGill University and Duke University on various projects in the field of mental health.
But before it can hope to find its products in hospitals or pharmacies, Cubed Biotech will have to find a way to limit the duration of the effects of mushrooms, and therefore of pills produced in the laboratory.
“Currently, the effects can last for several hours, so doctors have to spend a lot of time with each patient [qui consomment des champignons magiques dans le cadre d’un traitement]. A limited duration would allow several patients to be seen in the same day. It might revolutionize mental health care,” explains Adam Coape-Arnold.
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