Dr. Evan Wood, recognized leader in the field of substance use research and treatment, joins Numinus as Chief Medical Officer

VANCOUVER (May 21, 2020)— Numinus Wellness Inc. (“Numinus”) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Evan Wood, MD, PhD, ABIM, FASAM, FRCPC, ABAM Diplomat as Chief Medical Officer with Numinus, effective immediately. Dr. Wood, who over a 20-year career has gained international recognition as a leading researcher into addiction, most recently as the Executive Director of the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU) — a leading research organization into the treatment of substance use and addiction.

“This is an exciting day for all of us at Numinus,” says Numinus CEO Payton Nyquvest. “Dr. Wood is a recognized leader in the area of addiction research and treatment and he will play a central role in advancing the Numinus mission to help people heal and be well.”

As Chief Medical Officer with Numinus, Dr. Wood will play a lead role in helping to establish the evolving Numinus models of care, including defining and hiring the medical and therapeutic team. He will also lead the design of an interdisciplinary medical education program, serve as the company’s primary representative in all research partnerships and protocol development, work with regulators and health authority leadership to advance psychedelic therapies, and help ensure Numinus centres operate within all medical and regulatory guidelines.

“I share the Numinus position that the societal costs of mental illness, addiction, trauma and unmet human potential are much too high,” says Dr. Wood. “My work and the work of others in the field indicate the value of continuing to explore the use of psychedelic substances in safe, controlled therapeutic environments to address these issues, and I look forward to positioning Numinus as a leader in this emerging area of treatment.”

Dr. Wood has had a longstanding interest in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy through his involvement with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) trial of MDMA assisted psychotherapy and through emerging work examining the potential of psilocybin assisted psychotherapy for a range of mental health disorders.

In addition to his ongoing work with research and clinical activities, Dr. Wood is also a professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia, where he helps lead the university’s efforts in the area of addiction prevention and treatment through a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair. Dr. Wood has previously been the Physician Program Director for Addiction Services at Providence Health Care, Medical Director for Community Addiction Services at Vancouver Coastal Health, and the founding Director of North America’s largest clinical and research fellowship training programs for addiction medicine physicians based at UBC.

Throughout his career, Dr. Wood has played an instrumental role in bringing research ideas from the laboratory into routine use in the health care system. He was the lead author of the first study to show that HIV treatment could prevent the transmission of HIV infection among those who inject drugs which contributed to a revision of international therapeutic guidelines. Dr. Wood was also the founding principal investigator of Insite, North America’s medically supervised safer injecting facility — a life saving intervention now common in most large Canadian cities. His work in the area of addiction treatment has contributed to the development of innovative and widely adopted provincial and national therapeutic guidelines . In addition to leading transformative health system interventions, Dr. Wood has been regularly funded by the US National Institute on Drug Abuse and has co-authored more than 400 scientific papers. Through his ongoing work with UBC and the BCCSU, Dr. Wood is also the Principal Investigator for the BC Node of the Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Misuse (CRISM) a Canadian Institutes of Health Research funded national addiction research network.

Dr. Wood’s Additional Roles & Resources:

Advisor to the Global Commission on Drug Policy
Founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (now the International Centre for Drug Policy Evaluation), a vehicle for supporting several drug policy reforms including the drafting of the Vienna Declaration and the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s work on HIV/AIDS
Founder of the Stop the Violence BC coalition that advocated for the taxation and regulation of the adult use of Cannabis in Canada
Former Associate Editor of the International Journal of Drug Policy
Principal Investigator of the evaluation of North America’s First Medically Supervised Safer Injecting Facility (see his research)
Consulted for the World Health Organization
Provided expert advice to the BC Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Canada
Complete List of over 600 Published Works in Dr. Wood’s Bibliography
Selected for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Peter Lougheed Award as the nation’s top New Investigator applicant (2003)
Recipient of the Ron Ghitter Award in Human Rights (2006)
Recipient of a leadership award from the Canadian Medical Association (2007)
Physician of the Year award from the British Medical Journal (2010)

Awards:

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About Numinus

Numinus is a Vancouver-based health care company helping to support the universal desire to heal and be well. Through Numinus Bioscience, Numinus has a Health Canada cannabis testing license that allows the company to test and analyze cannabis products from licensed producers. In addition, through a wholly-owned subsidiary Salvation Botanicals, Numinus is a late-stage applicant to receive a Health Canada standard processing license to produce cannabis products. Numinus also has a dealer’s licence which allows the company to test, possess, buy and sell MDMA, psilocybin, psilocin, DMT and mescaline. Numinus is seeking to expand the licence to include activities such as import/export, testing and R&D. The expanded license will allow Numinus to support the growing number of studies on the potential benefits of psychedelic therapies through research projects, product development, and the supply and distribution of these substances. Numinus also operates a stand-alone centre offering patients integrative health solutions to help heal, connect and grow. Psychedelics will be part of this offering but will only be available for treatment once approved by regulators and governing bodies — a process Numinus is helping to support.

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