Over the week­end, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump en­dorsed the po­ten­tial of psy­che­del­ic treat­ments and vowed to ex­pe­dite their re­search and de­vel­op­ment as reme­dies for se­vere men­tal health con­di­tions, a sem­i­nal mo­ment for a field long shunned by the US gov­ern­ment.

But how im­pact­ful his lat­est ex­ec­u­tive or­der is, and whether it ac­tu­al­ly ben­e­fits a ther­a­peu­tic class try­ing to break in­to main­stream pre­scrib­ing, re­mains to be seen.

The an­nounce­ment Sat­ur­day sent the world of psy­che­delics ablaze, in a good way, with com­pa­nies and re­searchers herald­ing Trump’s ac­tions as a break­through.

The ex­ec­u­tive or­der di­rects the FDA to has­ten re­view of psy­che­del­ic drug ap­pli­ca­tions us­ing the Com­mis­sion­er’s Na­tion­al Pri­or­i­ty Vouch­er (CN­PV) and to work with the Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion to al­low el­i­gi­ble pa­tients to re­ceive the drugs un­der the Right to Try law.

The in­vestor Ven­rock will make $900 mil­lion on a rel­a­tive­ly small $20 mil­lion in­vest­ment in­to Kelo­nia Ther­a­peu­tics, which on Mon­day agreed to sell it­self to Eli Lil­ly in a $3.25 bil­lion up­front deal.

Ven­rock­'s re­turn — 45 times its ini­tial in­vest­ment — could grow sub­stan­tial­ly larg­er if the deal pays out more of its full val­ue, a spokesper­son for the VC firm told End­points News. As part of its ac­qui­si­tion of Boston-based Kelo­nia, Lil­ly could pay out as much as $3.75 bil­lion more if Kelo­ni­a's in vi­vo CAR-T pro­grams hit cer­tain mile­stones.

If those lat­er pay­ments al­so come in, Ven­rock­'s to­tal re­turn could rise to 100 times its ini­tial in­vest­ment, the spokesper­son said.

LON­DON – Boehringer In­gel­heim is grow­ing its ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence arm to the UK by build­ing a new hub in cen­tral Lon­don and in­vest­ing £150 mil­lion over the next 10 years.

The AI hub will be in the Knowl­edge Quar­ter in King’s Cross, which is al­so home to AI units for oth­er drug­mak­ers like BioN­Tech and No­vo Nordisk. The area is al­so a key lo­ca­tion for com­pa­nies like Ope­nAI, Google, Meta and Benev­o­len­tAI.

Once com­plete, the Ger­man drug­mak­er’s AI hub will fo­cus on very ear­ly dis­ease bi­ol­o­gy, Nico­la Rich­mond, Boehringer’s head of AI and ma­chine learn­ing, told End­points News in an in­ter­view. “The vi­sion is that we build AI foun­da­tion­al ca­pa­bil­i­ties that help our sci­en­tists bet­ter un­der­stand dis­ease,” she added.

No­var­tis has axed two late-stage pro­grams in can­cer-re­lat­ed blood clots af­ter ob­serv­ing “in­fe­ri­or ef­fi­ca­cy” in a clin­i­cal tri­al.

The move marks a set­back for a can­di­date that No­var­tis out-li­censed in 2019, then paid $925 mil­lion up­front to get back in 2025. No­var­tis is still pur­su­ing the drug, abelacimab, for its lead in­di­ca­tion: atri­al fib­ril­la­tion.

Abelacimab is part of a new class of an­ti­co­ag­u­lants called fac­tor XI in­hibitors, which are de­signed to pre­vent blood clots while re­duc­ing the bleed­ing risks as­so­ci­at­ed with tra­di­tion­al blood thin­ners. The drug was in three Phase 3 tri­als, two of which were fo­cused on can­cer-re­lat­ed throm­bo­sis.