Synthetic biology · Cannabinoids and tryptamines
CB Therapeutics
A Carlsbad company that brews cannabinoids, psilocybin and other plant and fungal molecules in engineered yeast. Eight granted US patents, a Cleveland Clinic memorandum, a joint venture with atai that unwound, and a crowdfunding round withdrawn before a dollar came in.
A dispensary downstairs, a strip club next door
The first lab was two garages, one in Clairemont and one in Berkeley. Then came 1,600 square feet in Kearny Mesa, third floor, cheap.
“There was a (marijuana) dispensary downstairs, there was a strip club next door.” Sher Ali Butt told the San Diego Business Journal in 2022. People assumed the two engineers upstairs were growing plants.
They were not growing anything. They were feeding sugar to yeast rebuilt to make the molecules a cannabis plant makes, and then the molecules a mushroom makes. By April 2022 the company had put up a 16,000 square foot building in Carlsbad with bioreactors, purification equipment and space set aside for GMP manufacturing.
Why grow a plant to get one molecule
Hemp holds between half a percent and five percent CBD by weight, and a crop takes three to four months. Rare cannabinoids such as CBC, CBG and THCV sit in far smaller fractions. Psilocybin is harder: it comes from mushrooms that have to be grown, and the enzymes that build it were characterised in the literature only in 2017.
The answer is to move the pathway into brewer’s yeast. Butt put it this way in 2020: “Well, it’s about a hundred times cheaper to do it like that versus synthesizing something in the lab.” He described a seven day turnaround against a hemp farmer’s season.
It is not a lonely idea. Ginkgo Bioworks and Cronos Group announced a cannabinoid fermentation partnership in 2018 and hit equity milestones on CBGA and THCV. In August 2023 Cronos said it was winding down that Winnipeg facility and listing it for sale. The science works. Turning it into a durable business has been the hard part for everyone in the category.
Two UC Davis undergraduates
Butt and Vogan met at the University of California, Davis, both reading for bachelor of science degrees in biochemical and molecular biology. Butt ran laboratory operations at the cannabis testing company Steep Hill, then worked at Novartis, took an MBA at UC San Diego, and founded a testing lab called CB Labs. Vogan took a doctorate in bioengineering at UC Berkeley.
On method Butt is vivid: “Technically what we did is we engineered brand new proteins, sort of like Frankenstein proteins that we picked pieces from and took inspiration from nature.” The Delaware incorporation date on the SEC filing is March 20, 2015. In 2018 the company reached the finals of Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco.
A kingmaker, then a joint venture that unwound
In December 2019 the company said it had biosynthesised psilocybin and psilocin. In April 2020 it announced a memorandum of understanding with the Cleveland Clinic covering psilocybin, DMT and MDMA analogs for trials. In May 2021 it closed a Series A filled entirely by re.Mind Capital, the mental health fund inside Christian Angermayer’s family office, and added atai’s chief scientific officer and a re.Mind founding partner to its board. Butt said the money mattered less than the company it came with: “this is hands-down the best group of investors and partners to work with in this industry”.
In December 2021 CB Therapeutics and atai launched a joint venture, TryptageniX. Two years later it came apart. atai’s annual report says that in December 2023 it transferred its equity interest in TryptageniX back to CB Therapeutics “in exchange for certain intellectual property and an Amended and Restated Development Services and Exclusive License Agreement”, deconsolidated it and booked a gain of $0.4 million. By the end of 2024 the milestone and royalty liability atai still carried “was estimated to be an immaterial amount”.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Granted patents | Eight, matching the count on the company website: US 10,435,727 (2019, no assignee on its face), 10,671,632, 10,982,243, 10,988,785, 11,028,417, 11,041,002, 11,441,164 and 11,987,602 (May 2024). Fifteen further published applications, the latest June 2025 on monoterpene indole alkaloids. | Public record |
| The psilocybin patent | US 11,441,164, granted Sep 13, 2022. When the application published, Psychedelic Alpha reported the four enzymes claimed had been characterised and published by Fricke, Blei and Hoffmeister in 2017, and that a Finnish research centre had filed on the same ground in 2018. It issued anyway. | Independent |
| Patent count over time | Seven granted claimed in May 2022, when the record shows six. Seven granted and 13 pending in February 2023, and eight now: both match. | Public record |
| Clinical work | No registered trial names CB Therapeutics. The Cleveland Clinic arrangement was a memorandum of understanding, not a supply contract. | Not found |
| Peer reviewed papers | None found under the company name in PubMed. | Not found |
| Revenue and losses | Form C, Feb 2023: revenue $2,014,066 and net loss $1,772,158 in the latest year reported; revenue $0 and net loss $2,278,343 the year before. Kingscrowd read the later year as 2021. The company had told the San Diego Business Journal its 2021 revenue was $1.1 million. | Differs from filing |
| Headcount | 21 in April 2022 with 26 forecast by year end. The Form C reports 18, as does Y Combinator. | Below the forecast |
| DEA Schedule I licence | Asserted repeatedly, including “We have a DEA Scheduled I License” in 2022. No Federal Register notice names the company. DEA publishes those for bulk manufacturer applicants, not for Schedule I researcher or analytical laboratory registrations, so silence is not disproof. | Company-stated |
| Federal grants | No NIH or NSF award to this company found. | Not found |
| Name collision | An unrelated CB Therapeutics Inc. in the Cayman Islands holds SEC CIK 0001681660 and a set of oncology patents. Its 2016 Form D is routinely attached to the Carlsbad company by automated databases. | Public record |
Read plainly: the technology is real and the patent estate is real and checkable. The downstream is what is missing. No registered trial, no published paper, no named pharmaceutical customer. The one large partner that put its name to a venture handed the venture back after two years and now values what remains of it at nothing material. The last verified revenue figure is four years old.
What to watch
- A registered trial, or a named buyer, that turns the supplier story into a contract on the record.
- A new financing on the record. Nothing has been filed with the SEC since April 2023.
- The alkaloid programs. A June 2025 application covers monoterpene indole alkaloids, and DEA placed three 7-hydroxymitragynine related substances into Schedule I by temporary order on August 26, 2026.
- Cannabinoid scheduling. DEA moved FDA approved marijuana drug products to Schedule III on April 28, 2026 and set a hearing on wider rescheduling for June 29, 2026.
- Whether the ergoline and retinol programs of 2024 and 2025 produce a customer rather than another release.
In their words
“Initially, the lab space that we had was mine and Jacob’s garage.”
Sher Ali Butt, CEO, San Diego Business Journal, 2022 · Independent
“We are the company that’s producing the shovels given to other companies so they can go dig for the gold.”
Sher Ali Butt, San Diego Business Journal, 2022 · Independent
“Technically what we did is we engineered brand new proteins, sort of like Frankenstein proteins that we picked pieces from and took inspiration from nature.”
Sher Ali Butt, Psychedelic Invest, 2020 · Interview
“We started the company in 2016 with cannabinoids, and we’re at the point where we’re starting to sell cannabinoids now that are made from genetically engineered yeast in the lab.”
Sher Ali Butt, Psychedelic Invest, 2020 · Interview
“I definitely don’t think that psychedelics should just be legalized over the counter.”
Sher Ali Butt, Psychedelic Invest, 2020 · Interview
“We have a DEA Scheduled I License and our technology has proven to produce any molecule and it’s done carbon negative, which speaks to the support of our environment.”
Hurd, business development lead, Drug Discovery and Development, 2022 · Company-stated
“The original paper from which CB seems to have borrowed without attribution is by Dr. Janis Fricke, Dr. Felix Blei (currently VP for Analytics and co-founder of Mimosa Therapeutics and founder of MIRACULIX), and Dr. Dirk Hoffmeister.”
James Keim, CEO, Mimosa Therapeutics, quoted by Psychedelic Alpha, 2021 · Independent
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordForm C, CB Therapeutics, Inc., CIK 0001949369
- Public recordForm C-W, withdrawal of offering
- Public recordEDGAR company search, two registrants named CB Therapeutics
- Public recordATAI Life Sciences N.V. Form 10-K, fiscal 2024
- Public recordUS patents 10,435,727 through 11,987,602
- Public recordTemporary placement of mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, MGM-15 and MGM-16 in Schedule I
- Public recordRescheduling of FDA approved products containing marijuana
- IndependentCB Therapeutics on the Move
- InterviewIs Fermentation the Answer to Scaling Psychedelic Production?
- IndependentPsychedelic Bulletin: CB Therapeutics’ Biosynthesis Patent
- InterviewCB Therapeutics biz dev lead sees opportunity in psychedelics
- IndependentCB Therapeutics on Republic 2023
- IndependentCronos closing cannabis fermentation facility in Winnipeg
- IndependentTryptageniX Platform Launches to Considerable Fanfare
- CompanyCB Therapeutics Closes on Oversubscribed Series A
- CompanyCollaboration Agreement with Cleveland Clinic
- CompanyCB Therapeutics and atai Life Sciences launch TryptageniX
- CompanyCB Therapeutics expands capabilities at new facility
- CompanyCB Therapeutics Breaks Ground on Sustainable Ergoline Biosynthesis
- CompanyCB Therapeutics website, platform and team pages
- CompanyY Combinator company page, Summer 2018 batch
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
