The claims were astounding.
“One company may have figured out how to actually rewire the brain with 100% patient improvement in Phase 2 trials. And FDA may have just handed them a golden ticket,” a voice intoned on a YouTube video about a biotech called Helus Pharma that’s developing psychedelic drugs for mental health disorders. “This is potentially the first new mechanism in decades to show durable remission after just two doses, with FDA acceleration, elite institutional backing, and billions in unmet demand,” it later said.
The video was one of a handful that were uploaded earlier this year and that came with a disclosure that they were advertisements for Helus and paid for by a third-party marketing agency. STAT also discovered another set of recently posted videos paid for by another marketing agency on behalf of AtaiBeckley, a much larger and well-known psychedelics company.
“What if one dose of a nasal spray could do what years of antidepressants could not, and it only takes 90 minutes? That is not hypothetical. That is real clinical data,” a voice on one video said about Atai’s lead candidate.
Both videos said they were for “informational” purposes only and not meant as investment advice.
Helus and AtaiBeckley are hardly the only drugmakers paying outside marketing companies for promotion. But many of these YouTube videos make exaggerated claims about investigational drugs, at a time when psychedelic-focused biotechs, which have long combatted stigma and skepticism, are trying to gain a foothold in the medical mainstream and with established pharma companies that may be interested in acquiring them.
