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Centre to be a national hub for clinical trials, research
Published Aug 11, 2024 • 9 minute read
Representatives from Queen’s University, Providence Care, the Ontario Brain Institute and others gathered to mark the official opening of the Centre for Psychedelics Health and Research at Providence Care Hospital in Kingston on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024. Photo by Meghan Balogh /The Whig-StandardArticle content
Kingston’s Providence Care and Queen’s University have partnered to open Canada’s first centre dedicated to health research and training in psychedelic compounds.
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Organizers gathered on Wednesday to mark the grand opening of the Centre for Psychedelics Health and Research at Providence Care Hospital, which they hope will become a hub for not only psychedelic research in the country, but also a national platform for clinical trials to explore the safety and efficacy of psychedelic compounds, a chance to train medical professionals in the current and future use of these substances and a way for policymakers, community members and researchers to share knowledge.
The centre opens thanks to a donation from the Ontario Brain Institute (OBI), and in partnership with the Canadian Biomarker Integration Network in Depression.
The centre was born out of work being done by the Psychedelic Science Advisory Committee at Queen’s University, formed in 2021 and led by committee chair Claudio Soares, a professor in the department of psychiatry in the Queen’s University School of Medicine and the new centre’s director.
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That committee, in conjunction with other researchers in Canada and around the world, has already begun contributing to the scientific body of knowledge via clinical trials in Kingston, specially looking at applications for the compound psilocybin, found in species of mushrooms around the world.
Claudio Soares, a professor of psychiatry at Queen’s University and the director of the new Centre for Psychedelics Health and Research at Providence Care Hospital, listens to presenters during the centre’s grand opening on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024. Photo by Meghan Balogh /The Whig-Standard
The centre will also have the opportunity to look at other psychotropic substances such as 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and ketamine and the effects that a growing body of research is demonstrating these compounds can have on various disorders such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), addiction and end-of-life distress.
Cathy Szabo, president and chief executive officer for Providence Care, described the centre’s opening as a “pivotal moment for the advancement of health care, innovation and collaboration in the Kingston community and beyond.”
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“Today marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter for our research department at Providence Care,” Szabo said on Wednesday. “And we are incredibly proud to welcome this innovative centre, which represents our continued commitment to excellence in health care.”
Szabo described psychedelic research as a new frontier in mental health treatment and research.
“The centre promises to open horizons for new future partnerships in health care, psychiatry and beyond,” she said. “I take pride that we gather here today to celebrate this exciting moment.”
Dr. Jane Philpott is a former federal health minister and the dean of Queen’s Health Sciences and spoke during the opening of the centre.
“Congratulations to everyone in this room who has had a part in making this possible,” she said on Wednesday. “It’s a day that I think several of us having been dreaming of for years, that a physical space would emerge.”
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Philpott said that the day was about the many people who made the centre a reality, but also about the “enormous possibilities as to what could happen with this group of substances, which have previously not had the opportunity to be researched adequately.”
“Many people believe that there is enormous therapeutic potential that is yet untapped, (but there is) actually not the kind of evidence base necessary in order to be able to do the regulatory work that will be required to be able to make these substances available, and to understand how they can best maximize their potential and minimize their harm,” she said. “It’s very exciting to see that this has come together.”
History of psychedelic research in North America
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Albert Garcia-Romeu, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and the associate director at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research, spoke via video link during the centre’s opening event.
Garcia-Romeu said that the opening of centres like his and the one at Providence Care Hospital mark a significant change in the way that medicine and psychiatry view psychedelic substances, which were formerly seen primarily as dangerous, without medical potential.
“May of (these substances) have been used for centuries, or even thousands of years, going back to Indigenous cultures who used psilocybin-containing mushrooms,” he said, pointing to Guatemala and Mexico, and historical records reaching back to the 1500s from European scholars who found that the Aztec people called these mushrooms divine substances of religious importance.
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“These are not necessarily anything new to us,” he said. “However, western science didn’t know anything about these substances until the 20th century.”
From the time that Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hoffman first synthesized LSD in the 1930s, discovering its psychoactive properties, interest in psychedelic compounds began to grow.
“From the 1940s to the 1970s there was a significant body of work that was happening, not just in North America, but also in Europe and Asia” Garcia-Romeu said. “Some of the most important and pioneering work was actually happening in Canada in Saskatchewan by Dr. Humphry Osmond, who was actually the person who coined the term ‘psychedelic’… specifically to try to characterize what these drugs were doing in their work with patients with alcoholism.
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“They were consistently getting reports of highly meaningful and even sometimes, what may be reported as spiritual types of experiences, that help these folks to move into a recovery from some of these very difficult to treat substance use issues.”
Garcia-Romeu described the past two decades as a “psychedelic Renaissance,” with small studies showing “significant promising findings” in treating depression, addictions, end-of-life anxiety and PTSD, and studies now growing to become phase III clinical trials.
“Today, with the current opioid crisis and the other mental health crises that we face, we’re heavily in need of new and novel types of treatment interventions,” he said. “And I think psychedelics really represent one of our leading new discoveries to try to help us move that in the right direction.”
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The growing interest in psychedelics as medicine
Providence Care and Queen’s University’s research centre joins a growing roster of centres worldwide, many in the United States. It’s the first of its kind in Canada.
While psychedelic compounds like psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine and LSD are illegal and regulated in Canada under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA), Health Canada makes access to these and other substances available through very specific pathways, including for clinical trials and through its Special Access Program, which allows medical professionals to help patients in certain medical circumstances gain permission for possession and use.
Accessing these substances for clinical trials, navigating the ethics of their trial use and creating a research environment in Kingston has involved “quite a lot of logistics,” Soares told the Whig-Standard during a recent interview.
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Claudio Soares is a professor of psychiatry at Queen’s University and the director of the new Centre for Psychedelics Health and Research at Providence Care Hospital. Photo by Meghan Balogh /The Whig-Standard
One of the first psilocybin trials at Queen’s University, examining psilocybin’s effects on people suffering from alcohol use disorder, is just now wrapping up, and Soares is excited by results that he said are “quite striking,” with some participants going from 15 to 20 drinks per day, down to one per week.
The randomized study, one part of a larger study taking place across Canada and Europe, utilized motivational enhancement therapy alongside an experience with psilocybin to help people reduce their cravings to alcohol.
The official results of the study will come later this year, Soares said, and four more psychedelic trials are waiting in the wings for Queen’s researchers, including one examining the microdosing of these compounds.
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Soares is one of three individuals trained in the application of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy who will be working out of the new centre.
He recently completed the psychedelic-assistant therapies and research certificate program through the California Institute of Integral Studies, a 10-month training program in the U.S. to help medical professionals navigate the skills and knowledge needed to work with psychedelics.
“It gave me a broader view of psychedelic research and clinical practice,” he said.
It was his examination of the work of other centres in the U.S. that helped Soares develop the centre in Kingston.
“The director of the Johns Hopkins centre is part of our council,” Soares said. “They’ve been doing research for 20 years.”
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Psychedelics in the mainstream
Soares is interested in how these compounds have manifested throughout human history, but more recently have worked their way from underground use to more mainstream knowledge.
“There is a lot to be learned from the longstanding recreational or underground use, and the more we can actually help people to share their knowledge, then that knowledge can actually (help to) form the next steps for therapeutic use.”
Navigating the cultural, religious and social implications of some psychedelic compounds can complicate scientific exploration, Soares said.
With ritual, community support and cultural importance, some psychedelic compounds—such as peyote for Indigenous North Americans, or Ayahuasca in Soares’ native South America—may not translate to the medical world. And that’s OK, Soares said.
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“It’s very difficult to just say I can use the same molecule or the same medicine in the mainstream and that can be easily adapted,” he said. “So, there are probably some of the psychedelics that will never be able to fully be used the way that they are used on the ground, and maybe they shouldn’t, right?”
‘It’s evolving very quickly’
With a research background in depression, and his ongoing work with cancer patients, psychedelics piqued his interest as an “alternative treatment for patients who don’t respond to the treatments that we have.”
“The patients that don’t respond well, particularly with severe PTSD, and the existential distress in patients with end-of-life or late-stage cancer, these are very difficult to manage situations, and these are some of the areas that psychedelics are emerging as very promising,” he said. “They are not a panacea…but they should be considered as hopefully reliable and well-characterized treatments for those patients who are likely to respond. We just have to exactly find out which ones are.”
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Soares believes that hospitals and universities are “putting themselves out there” with psychedelics, after having been left behind during the legalization of cannabis.
“When that was happening, I would say most medical centres remained on the sidelines,” he said. “They didn’t necessarily incorporate cannabis into their medical practice, and didn’t teach it in medical schools. And they were caught off guard when cannabis became legalized, and there was very little knowledge or research going on.”
The proactive approach is allowing Queen’s University and Providence Care to produce knowledge that will guide the future of psychedelics in Canada.
“It’s evolving very quickly,” Soares said, pointing to the growing body of research emerging from all over the world.
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“I think it’s kind of an eye-opener to Canadian institutions. Let’s be on the science-producing side, as opposed to just consumers.”
Soares is hopeful that the new centre at Providence Care Hospital will become a hub for clinical trials in Canada, connecting interested universities and research centres across the country.
“Our hope is that we can help to build and lead those clinical trials in Canada.”
Locally, Soares hopes the centre will form many partnerships to integrate multiple health-care professions.
“We are trying to build capacity, for instance, to explore psychedelics and and mental health in the military and veterans,” he said. “There are some emerging partnerships that we are building, and then obviously the partnership with Queen’s. (We hope to) have a opportunity for training of nurses, medical students, residents to learn about psychedelics as well.”
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Soares told those assembled on Wednesday that he is “humbled for us to have the opportunity to join the larger community of researchers in psychedelics,” a field in which he said a lot of interesting research is happening.
“We’re really excited,” Soares said. “One thing that will be very different at this centre from all the other centres that I know is the opportunity to do multi-professional, multidisciplinary research. A lot of research that is happening is really focused on mental health, and primarily with neuroscientists. Here, we really have the opportunity to branch out to rehab, to palliative medicine, to nursing, to psychology and to expand the research in psychedelics.”
Most importantly, Soares told those gathered, are the potential ways that psychedelics can impact patients.
“They have so many unmet needs, and I think psychedelics will be another tool in their toolbox.”
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Publish date : 2024-08-11 13:53:00
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