CA24130 - Psychedelic renaissance: turn on, tune in and drop in (PSY-NET)

Given the current stagnation in developing new treatments based on traditional drugs and mechanisms in the neurosciences, the resurgence of psychedelics has opened up a new, rapidly expanding field of research into consciousness, mental disorders and their treatment. Psilocybin, LSD, DMT or MDMA have already shown efficacy in the treatment of depression, anxiety and addiction. Recent advances in neuroimaging have made it possible to understand in detail the processes behind their unique effects, and groundbreaking discoveries about the therapeutic effects of psychedelics are finding their way into the world’s most prestigious journals. Despite all this, academic psychedelic research still suffers greatly from a lack of coordination at the international level in the areas of developing new molecules and formulations, understanding the underlying neurobiology from the molecular level to neuroimaging, conducting multicentre academic clinical trials, and sharing and standardising data to generate big data. At the same time, it is crucial to address the necessary adjustments to outdated regulatory frameworks to enable their wider therapeutic use. The current project aims to network academic scientific institutions from all these research areas with the pharmaceutical industry and organisations working on the reclassification of psychedelics. The aim is to create a platform for psychedelic research that will pave the way for the submission of large collaborative research projects, multicentre academic clinical trials at European level, open access data sharing, big data analysis and the conditions for the implementation of psychedelics in mental health care.