Tryp Therapeuatics (TRYPF) Coverage Report

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1. Tryp leadership includes successful, experienced drug developers. In sharp contrast to many of the psychedelic companies out there, Tryp has been founded and is being run by a team of experienced, successful drug developers, including its CEO Greg McKee, who co-founded Torrent Ventures with Tryp’s CFO, Luke Hayes. Torrent is focusing on startups pursuing a blend of life science and digital health opportunities. Prior, Mr. McKee ran CONNECT, one of San Diego’s first startup accelerators. In terms of Tryp’s management team, in our view, the culture reflects its founders, with drug development executives experienced in practicing successful drug development from major pharma’s like Pfizer (PFE; $47.51; NR) and Roche ( ROG.SW: $362.15; NR) and biotech’s like Genzyme (SNY; $51.78; NR), Tarsa Therapeutics (private), and AMRI (private). We like the approach coming from this drug development team, which is leveraging the disruptive potential of psychedelics, including the one that we believe is likely to have an impact on more patients than any other psychedelic, psilocybin, by developing innovative drug delivery technology enroute to treating conditions with the highest levels of unmet need: phantom limb pain (PLP); eating disorders; and fibromyalgia. Furthermore, we like the approach here of running relatively inexpensive Phase 2a trials to establish proof-of- concept and insights on dosing prior to running larger Phase 2bs. The experience and leadership of Robin Carhart-Harris, PhD, as Tryp’s Chairman of its Scientific Advisory Board supports our confidence in the indication selection and trial designs for Tryp as eating disorders and PLP have been a focus and/or recommendation of Dr. Carhart-Harris. He is, in our view, among the most respected and insightful psychedelic KOLs, having published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals. After earning his PhD, he founded the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Division of Brain Sciences, at Imperial College London and just this summer became the Director of the Neuroscape Psychedelic Division at UCSF. He serves on boards of several psychedelic companies. We have found his research publications to be prescient, well-sourced and instructive into the neurobiological and neuroplasticity effects of psychedelics. At Imperial College London he launched the world’s first psychedelic research center to study psychedelics in mental health and recently completed a study in major depressive disorder (MDD) where remission occurred in 57% of psilocybin patients vs. 28% of escitalopram patients (N Engl J Med 2021; 384:1402-1411). Rather than developing psychedelics in broad categories like depression and anxiety disorders, Tryp is focusing on rare diseases with severe unresolved medical issues. The company has been fairly quiet publicly since its December 2020 IPO, as it has been working the outside parties to establish its drug delivery technology, confirm its initial target indications, partner with the principal investigators to run the Phase 2a’s, ramp up synthetic drug manufacturing, and prepare for the start of four Phase 2a’s before the end of 2021 (see Exhibit 2). 2. Drug development strategy. Tryp’s development strategy is focused on leveraging psilocybin’s unique properties through Tryp’s novel drug delivery innovations, targeting indications with high unmet needs. While TRP-8803’s formulation work is being completed, Tryp is advancing its synthetic psilocybin capsules, TRP-8802, towards relatively inexpensive proof-of-concept readouts in 1H’22. We estimate the average cost of these Phase 2a are ~$1.5M, or Michael Higgins 212.409.2074 Tryp Therapeutics, Inc. (TRYPF) Page 4