Next-generation psychedelics: should new agents skip the trip?
Companies are investing in next-generation psychedelics to enhance mental health treatment, focusing on reducing psychoactive effects while maintaining therapeutic benefits. Despite expanding interest and investments, questions persist about efficacy and cost-effectiveness.
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Companies are investing in next-generation psychedelics to address mental health issues, attracting significant funding and partnerships. These new drugs aim to improve upon classical psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD by reducing or eliminating their psychoactive effects while maintaining therapeutic benefits. The resurgence of interest in psychedelics is driven by the limitations of current antidepressants and the success of drugs like Spravato. Various biotechs are exploring different strategies to refine psychedelic molecules, with some focusing on shorter or milder 'trips' to ease patient supervision requirements. The sector is rapidly expanding, with numerous drug development programs and significant investments. Companies like Cybin are developing analogs of psilocybin with improved pharmacokinetics and efficacy for treating conditions like depression. Despite the potential of these next-generation psychedelics, questions remain about their therapeutic efficacy, cost-effectiveness, and the necessity of the psychedelic experience for long-term mental health improvement. Researchers are exploring different approaches to fine-tune these compounds, aiming to balance therapeutic benefits with manageable side effects.
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1 commentsInterestingly, you can have trips without psychedelics, like with holotropic breathwork, and still get the benefits
> The resurgent interest in psychedelics is partly driven by huge unmet need. The World Health Organization estimates that about 280 million people worldwide have depression
It’s almost like the same system that makes people depressed, wants to create a pill to wave it away, so that people can keep doing the stuff that makes them depressed, but without getting depressed
We might be entering deep Brave New World territory
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