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  • Emyria (EMD) initiates a human cell-line preclinical study to advance its MDMA-inspired drug partnership with the University of Western Australia
  • MDMA has been showing promise as an adjunct to psychotherapy for the treatment of major unmet mental health needs, which has motivated Emyria to develop new MDMA-inspired analogues
  • The Institute of Respiratory Health has been engaged to conduct human cell-line studies to evaluate unique MDMA-inspired analogues suggested to have anti-fibrosis effects
  • Meanwhile, Emyria has received approval from the US Drug Enforcement Agency to transport five high priority MDMA-analogues to America
  • Emyria shares are down 4.65 per cent, trading at 20.5 cents at 2:21 pm AEST

Emyria (EMD) has initiated a human cell-line preclinical study to advance its MDMA-inspired drug partnership with the University of Western Australia.  

The company says MDMA, or ecstasy, has been showing promise as an adjunct to psychotherapy for the treatment of unmet mental health needs. As such, Emyria is aiming to develop new analogues inspired by MDMA.

The Institute of Respiratory Health (IRH) has been engaged to conduct human cell-line studies and advance Emyria’s MDMA-inspired drug discovery partnership with UWA.

IRH’s preclinical program will evaluate a set of unique MDMA-inspired analogues suggested to have anti-fibrosis effects, but limited neuropsychiatric action, based on early screening results.

Emyria Managing Director Dr Michael Winlo said the company is delighted to commence the preclinical program to examine the anti-fibrosis potential of some of its MDMA analogues.

“Fibrotic diseases represent a major group of unmet medical needs and our early screening results indicate some analogues may have potent antifibrotic activity,” Dr Winlo said.

“Emyria’s new drug discovery program inspired by MDMA continues to grow via our partnership with the University of Western Australia.”

“We now have three clear therapeutic focus areas – fibrotic diseases, next-generation MDMA for drug-assisted therapy and treatments for other neurological conditions – and I look forward to updating the market on each preclinical program as it advances.”

Meanwhile, Emyria has received approval from the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to transport five MDMA-analogues to America to engage with leading US-based research bodies and potential partners.

Subsequent to the DEA approval, the team at UWA have begun scaling up the synthesis of the five selected compounds to support further studies.

Emyria shares were down 4.65 per cent, trading at 20.5 cents at 2:21 pm AEST.

EMD by the numbers
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