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Today’s lead story is how Compass Pathways — the company furthest along in the race to bring a psychedelic drug to market — plans to launch its depression drug through the clinics that Johnson & Johnson’s ketamine nasal spray, Spravato, built. You can read that story immediately below!

If you keep scrolling you’ll find stories about the debate over how psychedelics impact the brain, everything you need to know about trip killers, the DEA trying to move new drugs to Schedule I, and more.

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Pending FDA approval, Compass Pathways plans to roll out its psilocybin depression drug through the clinics that Johnson & Johnson’s Spravato helped build.

Compass Pathways is lifting a move from pharma giant Johnson & Johnson. The biotech firm’s psilocybin drug for depression is the furthest along in a wave of psychedelic therapies heading toward FDA approval and the company plans to launch it through the clinics that a ketamine drug called Spravato helped build.

Compass, based in the United Kingdom, expects to finish submitting its FDA application for COMP360, a synthetic version of psilocybin, in the fourth quarter of 2026. If approved by the FDA, executives say the drug will roll out through interventional psychiatry clinics that multiplied after Johnson & Johnson launched Spravato, its ketamine-based nasal spray depression treatment, in 2019.

This plan hinges on already existing infrastructure. COMP360 requires a six-to eight-hour observation period, which instantly rules out the primary care offices where most antidepressants are prescribed. When Spravato debuted, only a handful of clinics could handle multi-hour, in-office monitoring. Today, there are roughly 8,500, according to Compass Chief Patient Officer Steve Levine, who spoke with BioPharma Dive alongside CEO Kabir Nath. Spravato brought in more than $1 billion in the first half of 2026.

“So the infrastructure is ready and waiting," says Levine to BioPharma Dive. "The same clinical staff will monitor patients having our treatment as are in these centers today."

Levine says Compass has already laid groundwork so clinics are reimbursed for every hour a patient spends in the chair, at a rate the company expects to top what clinics earn for Spravato. Patients who come in for Spravato sit roughly for three-hour visits 25 to 50 times per year on average. Compass expects COMP360 to be given one to four times annually.

Nath says Compass isn’t trying to poach Spravato’s roughly 100,000 patients across the country. He explains to BioPharma Dive that there are nearly 4 million people with depression who are taking nothing to manage symptoms or improve how they feel.

He also concedes the company can’t yet predict who will respond or how the roll out will go upon theoretical FDA approval. About 40% of patients see a clinically meaningful response to a second dose and the rest don’t.

For now, Compass plans to start small and handle early patients carefully before scaling up.

"We are expecting to do a quite contained, carefully managed launch," says Nath. "There will be things that we haven't thought about. That's just the reality of a launch."