5-MeO-DMT sits third in our patent tracker on combined activity — 52 granted, 112 pending, 164 total — behind psilocybin (which we broke down here) and ketamine, and ahead of DMT, ibogaine, LSD, and MDMA. What makes this compound's data different from psilocybin's isn't the count. It's that the company with the most convincing clinical results holds almost no patents on it at all.
Who's Filing
Turtle Bear Holdings, the private LLC tied to mycologist Paul Stamets, again holds the most among 5-MeO-DMT filers: 10 granted, 15 pending, spanning composition claims across both psilocybin and 5-MeO-DMT mushroom and toad-derived extracts. As with its psilocybin filings, these are broad compositional claims — not attached to a specific drug candidate in trials.
Beckley Psytech, now under AtaiBeckley (Nasdaq: ATAI) after its November 2025 merger, holds 8 granted and 8 pending — all 5-MeO-DMT and DMT. That IP backs BPL-003, an intranasal synthetic 5-MeO-DMT that posted a 55% next-day response rate in Phase 2b even in patients still on an SSRI, and picked up FDA Breakthrough Therapy Designation on October 16, 2025. AtaiBeckley has since agreed to be acquired by Eli Lilly for roughly $2.8 billion, expected to close by late 2026 — the clearest signal yet that a major pharma company is betting real money on this specific compound.
CaaMTech, the private Issaquah, WA prodrug chemistry company we covered in the psilocybin piece, holds 7 granted and 18 pending across a four-compound spread that includes 5-MeO-DMT.
Small Pharma and Cybin UK Ltd, both now under the same corporate umbrella after Cybin's 2023 acquisition of Small Pharma and its own January 2026 rename to Helus Pharma (Nasdaq: HELP), combine for 12 granted and 20 pending between the two entities in our data. Their patents lean DMT-primary, but at least one — a deuterated-tryptamine composition patent — explicitly claims 5-methoxy-DMT analogs too, protection the company says runs to 2041.
Universitätsspital Basel, the academic hospital home to Matthias Liechti's clinical pharmacology lab, holds 4 granted and 12 pending across five compounds — the broadest academic spread in the dataset. Liechti's group doesn't have a drug candidate; it publishes the clinical case studies and pharmacology reviews much of the rest of the field cites, including some of the only real-world data on 5-MeO-DMT for PTSD outside a formal trial.
Below those, Psilera, Atai Therapeutics' own separate filings, and Psilo Scientific each hold 3 granted patents touching 5-MeO-DMT, with Terran Biosciences — 2 granted, 13 pending — rounding out the application-heavy tail.
The Outlier: GH Research
GH Research (Nasdaq: GHRS) doesn't appear anywhere in the list above — it holds just 1 granted US patent, alongside 26 pending applications, making it the single most application-heavy company in our entire dataset. That's a strange position for the company with arguably the best data in the field: GH001, an inhaled synthetic 5-MeO-DMT, hit a 57.7% remission rate against 0% for placebo in its Phase 2b treatment-resistant depression trial, with the FDA lifting a clinical hold on the IND in January 2026 and clearing the way toward a global Phase 3. GH Research has separately been granted a European patent covering its mebufotenin (5-MeO-DMT) formulations — outside what our US-focused TREA pull counts — so its actual global position is stronger than the domestic numbers suggest. Still, compared to Beckley Psytech's 8 granted US patents backing a similarly-staged program, GH Research's US patent wall is thin relative to its clinical lead.
The Pattern
Three different bets are visible here. Turtle Bear's claims are broad and extract-based, unattached to any trial. Beckley Psytech built a moderate but focused patent position directly around the compound now heading toward Phase 3 — and got acquired for it. GH Research took the opposite path: strong clinical data, an FDA hold cleared, a European grant in hand, but a thin US patent count and a pending-application pile nearly as large as the rest of the field's granted patents combined. If GH001 reaches approval first, it'll be a real test of how much a defensible US patent position actually matters once a drug has FDA approval and trial-data exclusivity behind it instead.
This is business and regulatory reporting, not medical advice. No compound discussed here is FDA-approved for the indications listed.
Sources
- Altitude Intelligence: Psychedelic Patent Tracker
- Altitude: Psilocybin Has 223 Patents in Play
- atai Life Sciences and Beckley Psytech: FDA Breakthrough Therapy Designation for BPL-003
- GH Research: Announces Grant of European Patent Covering Mebufotenin Products
- GH Research: FDA Lifts Clinical Hold on GH001
- Microdose: Cybin Granted U.S. Patent for 5-MeO-DMT
- Forbes: Small Pharma's Patented Injectable DMT Formulations
- Matthias Liechti Lab, Universitätsspital Basel — ResearchGate
- Altitude: Trials Tracker