COMPASS Pathways establishes Centre of Excellence with Sheppard Pratt to accelerate research and improve patient experience in mental health care

COMPASS Pathways establishes Centre of Excellence with Sheppard Pratt
to accelerate research and improve patient experience in mental health care

London, UK – 8 January 2021

COMPASS Pathways plc (Nasdaq: CMPS) (“COMPASS”), a mental health care company dedicated to accelerating patient access to evidence-based innovation in mental health, is establishing its first Centre of Excellence in collaboration with The Sheppard Pratt Institute for Advanced Diagnostics and Therapeutics in Baltimore, Maryland, United States.     

The Centre of Excellence will model the “clinic of the future”, showcasing the best thinking in science, therapy, technology, and design. Working as a research facility and innovation lab, it will generate evidence to shape therapy models in mental health care, train and certify therapists, conduct clinical trials including proof-of-concept studies, and prototype digital solutions to improve patient experience. The first wave of research will focus on COMPASS’s investigational COMP360 psilocybin therapy, which comprises administration of COMP360 psilocybin with psychological support from specially trained therapists.                 

Sheppard Pratt is one of the world’s leading research institutes in mental health and one of the top psychiatric hospitals in the United States. It is a leader in clinical service delivery, supporting more than 70,000 patients annually in its local community, as well as across 42 states and 19 countries. The Centre of Excellence will be led by Scott Aaronson MD, Director of Clinical Research at Sheppard Pratt, a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists.

The Centre of Excellence will be built on the Sheppard Pratt Towson campus and will include at least four state-of-the-art psychedelic therapy rooms, as well as facilities for research and training. In addition to a capital investment to support the design and building work, COMPASS will fund research studies into psilocybin therapy and other therapies, led by Dr Aaronson.  

Dr Aaronson said, “The Centre of Excellence will enable us to carry out new research in the use of psilocybin therapy for a range of mental illnesses, such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, among others. We are already using COMP360 psilocybin in two investigator-initiated studies in psilocybin therapy for severe treatment-resistant depression and for bipolar type II depression. We can see the enormous potential that this therapy could have on the lives of millions of people with mental health conditions around the world.”