Driving Disruption: Ben Lightburn Of Filament Health On The Innovative Approaches They Are Taking To Disrupt Their Industries
An Interview With Cynthia Corsetti
Our focus on substance use disorders could significantly disrupt the way that we approach treatment of these serious and under-researched conditions. As of 2021, 24 million Americans had at least one drug use disorder. As I mentioned before, psilocybin has shown promise for treating a number of these health conditions and our hope is that Filament’s research will offer a solution for the millions of people struggling with them.
In an age where industries evolve at lightning speed, there exists a special breed of C-suite executives who are not just navigating the changes but also driving them. These are the pioneers who think outside the box, championing novel strategies that shatter the status quo and set new industry standards. Their approach fosters innovation, spurs growth, and leads to disruptive change that redefines their sectors. In this interview series, we are talking to disruptive C-suite executives to share their experiences, insights, and the secrets behind the innovative approaches they are taking to disrupt their industries. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Benjamin Lightburn.
Benjamin Lightburn is a proven entrepreneur and leader specializing in the research, development, and commercialization of novel extraction technologies. He is currently applying this experience to the development of natural psychedelic medicines as CEO and Co-Founder of Filament Health.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion about disruption, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Filament Health is the first company to develop natural psychedelic drug candidates and enter them into clinical trials. Our psilocybin drug candidate is naturally extracted from magic mushrooms and is currently being studied in clinical trials around the world for indications including depression, substance use disorders, PTSD, palliative care, and chronic pain. This sets us apart from the vast majority of psychedelic drug developers who work with synthetic compounds. It’s very easy to create a standardized dose of synthetic psilocybin in a lab, it’s much more difficult to naturally extract an exact dose from an organic source like a magic mushroom. Our ability to do this is what sets Filament apart.
We are pursuing natural psychedelics over synthetic compounds for several reasons. Our drug candidates contain a specific quantity of pure natural psilocybin, but they also contain additional sub metabolites extracted from the magic mushroom which we believe may offer a potential “entourage effect.” In other words, these additional compounds could enhance the effects of the psilocybin, just as they’ve evolved to do in the magic mushroom. For example, baeocystin is found in magic mushrooms and has been shown to induce a gentle hallucinogenic effect. Beta-carbolines are also present and they are potent inhibitors of the enzyme which breaks down psilocin inside the body. This augmentation could lead to an increased intensity and duration of a psychedelic experience. We believe this is a significant potential advantage over synthetically derived drugs which contain only psilocybin.
Furthermore, we know that consumers typically prefer natural products over synthetics. For example, most people prefer to drink coffee or tea — which are natural extractions — rather than taking a caffeine pill. Therefore, a natural psychedelic drug could lead to more widespread adoption.
Which three-character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
- In startup life you obviously need conviction, but you also need to be open to suggestions and advice. However there’s a paradox in that those that you are seeking advice from may not have experience doing what you are trying to do. So you have to strike a balance when deciding which advice to accept and reject.
- Confidence and sometimes dogged determination to see your goals through to the end.
- A positive attitude and the ability to put faith in your team.
Can you share a story with us about a hard decision or choice you had to make as a leader? How these challenges have shaped your leadership.
The decision whether or not to sell my last company was a difficult one. On the one hand, there was money on the table for the investors of the company who had invested in order to make a financial return. On the other hand, I knew that there was a risk that the integration with the acquirer would not go smoothly and we would certainly have less agency than we were used to. Ultimately we decided to sell the company and many of our fears came to pass. This was one of the main reasons for starting Filament — to reassemble the team from the previously exited company which I knew worked well together and had previously demonstrated incredible results.
In the context of a business, what exactly is “Disruption”?
In everyday life, we tend to think of disruption as a negative but in the context of a business, it’s both positive and necessary in order to make progress. At Filament, our whole company ethos is centred on disrupting the psychedelic industry norm of only researching synthetic compounds — we believe that naturally-derived psychedelic drugs are the preferable option, and we’re working hard to make it a reality.
How do you perceive the role of ‘disruption’ within your industry, and how have you personally embraced it? Is it a necessity, a strategy, or something else entirely in your view?
The resurgence of psychedelic research after a long period of dormancy due to prohibition and the war on drugs is a disruption in itself. For decades, we have treated mental health conditions such as depression with traditional pharmaceuticals like Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) yet they are often ineffective and poorly tolerated. Psychedelic compounds like psilocybin are incredibly promising for the treatment of mental health and could completely reshape how we approach treating these conditions, thereby helping millions of people who are currently suffering.
What lessons have you learned from challenging conventional wisdom, and how have those lessons shaped your leadership style?
I’ve been told many times in my career that my ideas will fail. At Mazza Innovation, a botanical extraction company which I scaled from pre-pilot to over $1 million in revenue and sold in 2018, I recognized that the toxic, flammable solvents commonly in use for botanical extraction were flawed, and that a natural extraction process would be superior. However, I was told that using water to replace those toxic solvents was impossible. Once I gave a speech at a botanical extraction conference about our work at Mazza, and an audience member raised his hand to tell me that what we were doing could not be done — he had tried it himself and failed. This is part of the entrepreneur’s dilemma — you have to get used to people telling you that your ideas are not possible. Often these people are experts in your field.
Could you describe a time when you faced significant pushback for a disruptive idea? How did you navigate the opposition, and what advice would you give to others in a similar situation?
Until we founded Filament, the consensus in the psychedelics industry had always been that natural psychedelic pharmaceuticals were not a viable option — that it’s too hard to standardize natural compounds, that it’s not possible to scale or to protect the intellectual property, and that regulators won’t approve them. I’m proud that Filament has proven the majority wrong. We have developed a manufacturing process that produces stable and standardized pharmaceutical candidates from highly variable psychedelic plants and fungi, we have an industry-leading patent portfolio of over 20 patents in Canada and the US, and we are currently conducting the first-ever FDA clinical trial of natural psychedelic drug candidates at UCSF.
What are your “Five Innovative Approaches We Are Using To Disrupt Our Industry”?
Filament is a leader in the psychedelic industry and we are disrupting industry norms in a number of ways:
1. We are the first company to develop stable, standardized natural psychedelic drug candidates and receive FDA approval to enter them into clinical trials.
2. At a time when there are very few methods for patients to legally access psilocybin anywhere in the world, we are providing our psilocybin drug candidate to patients in Canada through Health Canada’s Special Access Program (SAP). The SAP is a program whereby doctors can prescribe unapproved drugs for patients with life-threatening conditions. We’re proud to be the primary supplier of psilocybin for the SAP and over 100 patients have been approved to receive our drug, which we provide free of charge.
3. Intellectual property is a significant challenge in the psychedelic industry. However at Filament, we have developed a robust IP portfolio of more than 20 patents in the US and Canada, protecting the technology with which we develop our drug candidates.
4. Filament is unique in our industry because we are already generating revenue. Clinical trials take a long time and lots of capital. We are bringing in revenue before the completion of clinical trials through our large partner network whereby other biotech companies license our drug candidates and associated IP for their own clinical development programs. We receive milestone payments from these partners as their research progresses as well as royalties on future commercial sales.
5. Our focus on substance use disorders could significantly disrupt the way that we approach treatment of these serious and under-researched conditions. As of 2021, 24 million Americans had at least one drug use disorder. As I mentioned before, psilocybin has shown promise for treating a number of these health conditions and our hope is that Filament’s research will offer a solution for the millions of people struggling with them.
Looking back at your career, in what ways has being disruptive defined or redefined your path? What surprises have you encountered along the way?
Being disruptive has ultimately defined my career — I’ve built it on the idea that just because you’re told that things have always been done a certain way, or that something is impossible, doesn’t mean that you should accept it as fact. One thing that has surprised me along the way is the level of resistance that some people have to new technologies. At Mazza, I was told that creating the technology we had commercialized was impossible. At Filament, we were told time and time again that regulatory bodies would never let natural psychedelics into clinical trials or early access schemes. Even today we are sometimes still told this even though we now have ample evidence to the contrary.
Beyond professional accomplishments, how has embracing disruption affected you on a personal level?
My wife and I have two boys under the age of six, so disruption is very much a part of my personal life, in addition to my work.
In your role as a C-suite leader, driving innovation and embracing disruption, what thoughts or concerns keep you awake at night? How do these reflections guide your decisions and leadership?
When you decide to launch a startup you are signing yourself up for many sleepless nights — even the smoothest startup journey is fraught with unexpected challenges. One thing that I reflect on is that our employees may not be completely familiar with a startup environment. So you need to strike a balance between being honest about the risks of a startup but not overwhelm people (and also not get overwhelmed yourself). The flipside of this is that everyone, myself included, gets to do really meaningful work that just isn’t possible to do anywhere else.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I truly believe that the work we’re doing at Filament Health could help millions of people around the world suffering from mental health conditions. The psychedelic movement has incredible potential and we’re proud to be at the forefront of it.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Check out our website (www.filament.health), sign up for our newsletter, and follow us on social media at @filamenthealth.
Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
About the Interviewer: Cynthia Corsetti is an esteemed executive coach with over two decades in corporate leadership and 11 years in executive coaching. Author of the upcoming book, “Dark Drivers,” she guides high-performing professionals and Fortune 500 firms to recognize and manage underlying influences affecting their leadership. Beyond individual coaching, Cynthia offers a 6-month executive transition program and partners with organizations to nurture the next wave of leadership excellence.
