Dario Dornbierer

Affective disorders including depression, bipolar and anxiety disorder are widespread in society and significant contributors to the current economic burden in health care, reaching double-digit billion CHF amounts only in Switzerland. Despite high prevalence, most of the available therapies show suboptimal efficacy. Fewer than 50% of all patients with depression show full recovery with an optimized standard treatment.

Recently, psychedelic compounds such as ketamine, psilocybin, LSD and dimethyltryptamine (DMT) were discovered to alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression in a rapid-acting manner. Based on these findings, Dario Dornbierer and his team have developed a novel pharmaceutical product for the safe, rapid-acting and sustainable treatment of affective disorders.

During the fellowship the team will start the pharmaceutical product development, perform preliminary pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic product testing in humans and define a regulatory roadmap for clinical trials.

Affiliation: Prof. Erich Seifritz

Start date: 05/2019

• Dario Dornbierer co-founded the UZH Spin-off Reconnect Labs AG in 2021