News out today: Pasithea Therapeutics Adds Esketamine Nasal Spray to its Clinic Offerings in the U.K.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pasithea-therapeutics-adds-esketamine-nasal-130000579.html
Original Report
Update 10-15-21
Pasithea (KTTA) Opens Its First Ketamine Infusion Clinic and Sets an Aggressive Agenda to Discover Small Molecule Therapeutics to Treat Neurological Disorders
Pasithea Therapeutics Corp. (NASDAQ: KTTA) is a biotechnology company focused on treatments for psychiatric and neurological disorders.
Current price $2.91/share (as of market close 10-14-21)
KTTA shares finished the Thursday session at $2.91 (+8.18) after reaching a high for the day of $2.99/share. Trading volume for the day was at 366K shares. We note that KTTA shares reached over $3 in after hours trading.
New NASDAQ listing only a month ago.
Only 13M shares outstanding and 6.25M in the public float.
Insiders own 52% of the outstanding shares.
Growing market sector.
Earlier I talked about the KTTA launch of the ketamine infusion business and how it will bring immediate revenues to the company. It’s impressive that they have already opened their first ketamine clinic at Zen Healthcare in the UK only one month after the IPO.
I also said that the company had its eye on creating two parallel businesses, one with a longer term for development and I want to discuss that now.
The long-term goal at KTTA, its primary focus, is on the drug discovery side, targeting new medicines and treatments focused on the pathophysiology underlying neurological disorders. KTTA has an impressive management team and board to lead this effort including Professor Lawrence Steinman, chairman of Pasithea, and professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Pediatrics, and Genetics at Stanford University Medical School.
We told you earlier that KTTA has teamed with Evotec, a life sciences company engaged in finding New Chemical Entities (NCE) to treat many indications. Evotec has a network of partners including all the top 20 Pharmaceutical companies, and over 800 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, as well as other healthcare stakeholders. Initially, Pasithea will work with Evotec to advance small molecule therapeutics with a focus on a specific neuroinflammatory pathway implicated in the neurobiology of depression and schizophrenia.
Evotec, which has operations at 14 different sites in four countries and currently has over 200 proprietary and co-owned R&D projects from early discovery to clinical development. Teaming with Evotec seems like smart move and on that could accelerate the development of a NCE for Pasithea.
Let’s look at some of the potential competition for KTTA for a valuation comparison:
Company Value Revenue (ttm)
Cybin (CYBN) $322M n/a
Relmada (RLMD) $431M n/a
Pasithea (KTTA) $37M n/a
Sensei (SNSE) $234M n/a
Bionomics (BNOEF) $100M $928K
KTTA is currently trailing the pack compared to these others indicating room for a near term growth in the Pasithea value. Pasithea has immediate revenue potential with its ketamine infusion business and a longer term potential to develop novel compounds for the treatment of neurological disorders. The company seems oversold at this point.
original report below
The company recently completed its IPO of 4,800,000 units, with each unit consisting of one share of common stock and one warrant at an exercise price of $5.00 per unit, for aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $24.0 million. The company’s common stock and warrants began trading on the NASDAQ on September 15, 2021, under the symbols KTTA and KTTAW, respectively.
Pasithea Therapeutics Corp. (NASDAQ: KTTA) is a biotechnology company focused on treatments for psychiatric and neurological disorders.
Current price $2.69/share (as of market close 10-12-21)New NASDAQ listing only a month ago.Only 13M shares outstanding.Insiders own 52% of the outstanding shares.Growing market sector.
KTTA shares have dropped in price since the IPO one month ago. This drop is a common occurrence, but it creates an entry opportunity. The initial investors paid $5.00 per share and the warrants are exercisable at $5.00 per. We note that the KTTA shares have begun to get traction after their post IPO price drop.
It’s estimated that up to 64 million Americans suffer from some sort of mental health issue, a number that has been exacerbated by the pandemic. The market for treatment of mental health issues is expected to reach $19B over the next five years.The Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) treatment sector is underwhelmingly successful. Estimates show that only half of the people suffering depression seek help and of those who do, only half of those have success with traditional antidepressants. Fortunately, MDD is now looked at as an illness, not a weakness and new treatment methods are coming to the forefront.
What differentiates KTTA from other new companies treating MDD and other psychiatric disorders is that KTTA seeks to develop drugs to treat the underlying brain issues that can manifest into these conditions (more on that below). At this point, if you’ve been involved with biopharma start-ups before, you may be thinking that here’s another biopharma that may take five years to generate revenues.
The cycle of new drug development can be exhausting with pre-clinical lab studies, animal trials, three stages of human clinical trials, FDA approval, then commercialization, all fueled by endless rounds of dilutive financing.
But Pasithea has a plan for multiple verticals, one that may generate revenues in the near term and could fund the development of the drugs they seek to bring to market. I want to begin by describing the vertical that involves near term revenue and it involves ketamine. Ketamine has been used medically since it was approved by the FDA in 1970. It induces dissociative anesthesia, a trance-like state providing pain relief, sedation, and amnesia.
In controlled doses ketamine can be effective in treating MDD, PTSD, and other neurological disorders and KTTA wants to start a ketamine infusion business. Intravenous ketamine infusion (through an IV) as a treatment for depression and PTSD has become increasingly popular and is receiving increased backing from regulatory authorities.
The company has developed this business in the form of advisory services related to intravenous ketamine infusion to registered mental health clinics. It has gone ahead and established partnerships in various clinic chains across Los Angeles, New York, and London. The advisory services will involve helping registered healthcare providers to assess mental patients and help administer intravenous infusions of ketamine to help the patients deal with their psychological issues.
Pasithea’s clinic partners are expected to initially be Zen Healthcare and The IV Doc. Its probable that KTTA will expand the clinical partners base quickly. The IV Doc, based in the US, has been in business for seven years and has serviced 50,000 patients. Zen Healthcare, based in London, has been in business for five years and has serviced 30,000 patients. Patients will receive an initial assessment, a ketamine infusion, then a follow up. These new clinical partners specialize in “in home” drug infusions.
Pasithea management team:
Executive Chairman and Co-Founder, Professor Lawrence Steinman is currently the George A Zimmermann Endowed Chair in the Neurology Department at Stanford University.Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Tiago Reis Marques is a fellow at Imperial College London and a lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. Dr. Marques is also a psychiatrist at Maudsley Hospital.
The ketamine clinic business, though it could pay the bills at KTTA initially, is not the main focus of the company. Their main pursuit will be the development of drugs to treat the underlying brain disorders the manifest in neurological disorders such as MDD and schizophrenia.Pasithea’s operations are focused on developing drugs that target the pathophysiology underlying psychiatric and neurological disorders and it is developing novel pharmacological agents that have an increased level of effectiveness on patients suffering from illnesses such as depression, PTSD, schizophrenia, and others.
Recently KTTA has teamed with Evotec, a life sciences company engaged in finding New Chemical Entities (NCE) to treat many indications. Evotec has a network of partners including all Top 20 Pharma, and over 800 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, as well as other healthcare stakeholders. Initially, Pasithea will work with Evotec to advance small molecule therapeutics with a focus on a specific neuroinflammatory pathway implicated in the neurobiology of depression and schizophrenia.
“This is a significant step on our drug development path to ultimately develop new molecular entities to improve the lives of those suffering with brain disorders,” said Dr. Tiago Reis Marques, chief executive officer of Pasithea,”
About Pasithea Therapeutics Corp.
Pasithea Therapeutics Corp. is a biotechnology company focused on the research and discovery of new and effective treatments for psychiatric and neurological disorders. Its biotech operations will focus on developing drugs that target the pathophysiology underlying such disorders, with the goal of developing new pharmacological agents that display significant advantages over conventional therapies with respect to efficacy and tolerability.
The Company’s secondary operations focus on providing business support services to anti-depression clinics in the United Kingdom and in the United States. The Company’s operations in the United Kingdom will involve providing business support services to registered healthcare providers who will assess patients, and if appropriate, administer intravenous infusions of ketamine, and the Company’s operations in the United States will involve providing business support services to entities that furnish similar services.
