Eversio Wellness continues to trailblaze.
In 2021, the Surrey company received one of the first licences issued in Canada to grow and extract psilocybin producing mushrooms, or magic mushrooms.
Now Eversio may be the first company to do trials for safety and efficacy of naturally-produced whole psilocybin mushroom. Up until now, it’s been very difficult to produce a standardized product naturally. As such, trials have only been done with synthetically-created psilocybin.
Eversio will try to change that after CEO Craig Garden recently submitted an application to Health Canada to do trials with a naturally-produced product.
“The big push has always been to work with synthetic psilocybin,” explained Garden. “These compounds are single molecules grown in a bioreactor or in a lab. This is then standardized to a dose and then used in trials.”
Garden, who lives in Cloverdale, said it can be easily regulated and tests are repeatable. The hurdle with using an entire mushroom for a trial is that there is a lot of variation in both the amounts of psilocybin and in the other constituent parts of the mushroom.
“There’ve been, I think, three public companies over the last year that said they’ve tried to standardize growing a naturally occurring mushroom and encapsulating it to a standard dose and they’ve said it can’t be done.”
But Garden said Eversio spent 10 painstaking months coming up with their own method—which he said they may patent—to extract a standard dose from a magic mushroom.
“We just submitted for clinical trials this week,” said Garden. “In partnership with another Canadian firm, we’ll be working to supply them a standardized dose.”
He said their product is called “Ever 250” and it’s a blend of whole mushroom standardized to 2.5 milligrams of psilocybin.
“We’re quite proud of the accomplishment over the last year, because there’s a ton of analytical third party testing that goes into doing that.”
Garden said they’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on that testing.
“If Health Canada grants our trial, it’ll be the first in the world.”
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Garden said Eversio’s method is 100 per cent organic. He said the method is repeatable and psilocybin, along with other parts of the mushroom, parts that Garden said are critical to the process, will be used if their trial application is approved.
“Our product is a naturally occurring mushroom,” Garden added. “So it’s a psychedelic mushroom that mother nature grew.”
Garden said Eversio still grows everything in a lab and controls all the variables, but he said the hard part is getting that regulated, repeatable dose. Because of this, there hasn’t been a human trial anywhere in the world using the whole mushroom.
“It’s far easier to take something that’s synthetic and regulated to a dose in order to repeat that dose time and time again.”
Garden said when trials use synthetic molecules of psilocybin, it’s far easier to pass the strict guidelines by using a synthetic version.
“That’s why everybody does it. It’s easy and repeatable.”
Eversio Labs, a division of Eversio Wellness, handles all the R&D and the clinical trials work.
REBRAND
As for the other side of the business for Eversio Wellness—their “functional mushroom” side—the company is going to through a rebrand.
Garden said the functional side comprises non-psychoactive mushrooms from Eastern medicine. He said consumers take them for a multitude of health benefits, such as helping with inflammation, anxiety, and sleep, or for overall wellness.
“We’ve been selling that product for about a year and a half, mostly on e-commerce, but we’re in about 80 stores right now in British Columbia,” noted Garden. “Last month, we signed an agreement and now we’re going national with our product, which is really exciting for us because our business has grown 400 per cent in the last six months alone.”
While Eversio goes through its rebrand, it’s moving to 100 per cent compostable and recyclable packaging.
Garden said the last year and half has been about producing the “best possible product in the world” and about educating people about the health benefits of fungi.
“There are a lot of inferior products out there,” he said. “Some products are filled with grain or rice with a little bit of mushroom. But we only deal with the fruiting body and we deal with extracts in order to get a therapeutic dose.”
Garden said Eversio will take eight grams of organically grown product and reduce that down to one gram.
“When you look at your daily quantity, you’re getting 8,000 milligrams (with Eversio’s product), but with other products, you’d be lucky to get 150 milligrams.”
He said Eversio has implemented the highest standards possible that Health Canada will allow with a Natural Health Product Number, or NPN. That number indicates that a product meets all testing requirements and dosage requirements set up by Health Canada.
Eversio’s rebranded products are set to hit shelves in August. Eversio’s Canadian rollout is underway with plans to expand into the U.S. early in 2023.
For more info visit eversiowellness.com.
editor@cloverdalereporter.com
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