AtaiBeckley’s MDMA moves anxiety scales, but key questions remain for next trial

AtaiBeckley’s Phase IIa data suggest a psychedelic-adjacent drug can mitigate social anxiety disorder symptoms without adjunct psychotherapy — a key element for scalability — yet the result appeared to fall short of the step change many investors have come to associate with psychedelic efficacy.

AtaiBeckley Inc. (NASDAQ:ATAI) said Thursday that two doses of EMP-01, an oral R-MDMA candidate, led to a least-squares mean change of -28.53 points (n=35) on the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS) at day 43 versus -16.67 for placebo (n=35), for a difference of -11.85. The New York-based company reported a standardized effect size (Hedges’ g) of 0.45 and a one-tailed p-value of 0.036...