MADISON, WI — After years of painstaking nonprofit research and clinical development, Usona Institute announced Tuesday the creation of a new for-profit psilocybin biotechnology company called Prometheus.
The spinning out of a for-profit company will allow the organization to finally pursue the traditional psychedelic business model of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to compete with a bunch of suburban moms and kids in college dorm rooms growing a better version of their lead drug candidate and bringing it to market for a thousandth of the cost.
The newly formed company will focus on advancing synthetic psilocybin through the FDA approval process, a journey expected to require over a decade of research, a coterie of sympathetic journalists and lobbyists, and approximately $300 million in investor capital before discovering that consumers will continue purchasing mushrooms from the same source they've trusted since freshman year of college.
"While our nonprofit work has generated valuable scientific insights, we felt it was important to create a separate corporate entity capable of vaporizing shareholder value at a much faster rate," said a spokesperson. "This structure provides greater flexibility for achieving the kinds of losses venture capitalists have come to expect from the psychedelic sector."
Usona executives reportedly noticed the strategy employed by other non-profits turned for-profit biotech companies, citing Compass Pathways as a particularly inspiring model of the non-profit research to massive shareholder value loss pipeline.
Investors reportedly welcomed the announcement, noting that the company possesses many of the characteristics they seek in modern biotech ventures, including no existing revenue, uncertain regulatory timelines, and valuations entirely held up by ‘Trust Me Bro’.
Industry analysts praised the move as evidence that the psychedelic field remains committed to innovation despite repeated signs that nature solved the underlying manufacturing problem millions of years ago and that the legacy market is already globally entrenched and ruthless to competitors hawking simulacrums.
At press time, executives were said to be exploring additional revenue opportunities, including patenting new ways of asking patients to wear an eye mask and licensing proprietary breathing techniques to therapists for $4,999 per year.
Shares of several unrelated psychedelic companies fell immediately upon hearing the news, citing concerns that another competitor had entered the race to become the sector's next cautionary tale.