“Usona Institute – About Us
“Our objective is to find new and effective methods to relieve anxiety and suffering, and contribute to the understanding of neuroscience and the relationship of the mind and body. This is a frontier of research that will shape our future in important ways that we are just beginning to appreciate.”
—Bill Linton, Executive Director & Co-Founder
Usona Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit medical research organization dedicated to supporting and conducting pre-clinical and clinical research to further the understanding of the therapeutic effects of psilocybin and other consciousness-expanding medicines. Our focus is on alleviating depression in people for whom current medical treatments fall short in offering relief and a better quality of life.
Based in Madison, Wisconsin, Usona was founded in 2014 by Bill Linton, CEO and Founder of the international life sciences company Promega Corporation, and Malynn Utzinger, M.D., Director of Integrative Practices at Promega Corporation. The Institute was founded shortly after Bill was inspired by the meaningful impact that a psilocybin study at Johns Hopkins University had on a friend suffering from cancer.
To learn more about how Usona came to be founded as a non-profit medical research organization, please see the video below featuring Director of Integrative Medicine & Co- Founder Malynn Utzinger, M.D.
Collaborators
D’Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR)
Hans Knöll Institute
Imperial College London
Heffter Research Institute
MAPS Public Benefit Corporation
Swiss Neuromatrix Foundation
University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics
University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Pharmacy
Michael Bogenschutz, MD, New York University
Robin Carhart-Harris, PhD, Imperial College London
Roland Griffiths, PhD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Charles Grob, MD, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
Dirk Hoffmeister, PhD, Friedrich Schiller University and Hans Knöll Institute
Matthew Johnson, PhD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Benjamin Kelmendi, MD, Yale School of Medicine
Janis Phelps, PhD, CIIS Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research
Stephen Ross, MD, New York University
Franz Vollenweider, MD, University of Zürich
Joshua Woolley, MD, PhD, UCSF School of Medicine
Statement on Collaboration
Usona Institute is able to accomplish its mission of enabling and supporting psychedelic research and FDA registration of psilocybin therapy only through collaboration with many scientists, clinicians, research centers, expert consultants, and philanthropists globally.
Usona will continue to build relationships and collaborations with all organizations that share our philosophy of delivering approved therapies to those in need based on safety, high quality active drug materials, and highly-trained guides and practitioners, at the lowest possible cost.
Usona is building an advanced chemistry capability with our cGMP contract suppliers and through approved research chemistry facilities at two locations in the United States. High quality materials will be supplied to qualified research and therapy centers for basic, applied, and clinical research at cost or gratis, for the purpose of accelerating the pace of research for these important therapies.
Expertise on the Usona team includes:
Study design and protocol development
ICH GCP (Good Clinical Practice) compliance
FDA drug development
Clinical research leadership
Multi-site drug development management
Contract research organization (CRO) management
CIIS-trained guide expertise
Complex clinical drug development program management
Small molecule design and scale-up with full analytical capabilities
Preclinical safety and pharmacology research
Translational methodologies
Navigation of regulatory agencies and requirements
Psychiatry
Public health policy
Open Science
As a non-profit medical research organization, Usona Institute is dedicated to working for the public good through the advancement of scientific knowledge and the alleviation of mental suffering. Guided by this purpose, Usona—along with a collection of like-minded organizations, scientists, practitioners, and philanthropists—has signed a statement to make public the scientific discoveries and processes that arise from its research.
We believe that openness, transparency, and collaboration will move this field of scientific knowledge forward most efficiently and honorably, and we are pleased to commit ourselves to this approach.”
Learn more at https://www.usonainstitute.org/about/#about
