Researchers look to variations of psychedelic drugs as the future of mental health treatment

By Ann Thompson

Published June 5, 2023 at 4:22 AM EDT

(from left) UC Neuroscientist Eric Wohleb, Miami University's Chemical and Biomedical engineer Andrew Jones and UC graduate student Alex Kuhn look at the effects of the drug ketamine, also considered a psychedelic in subanesthetic doses, in the brain synapses of mice. — From left: UC Neuroscientist Eric Wohleb, Miami University's Chemical and Biomedical engineer Andrew Jones and UC graduate student Alex Kuhn look at the effects of the drug ketamine, also considered a psychedelic in subanesthetic doses, in the brain synapses of mice.

Magic mushrooms are increasingly seen as a possible treatment in the mental health space. Dozens of clinical trials are underway, and even the Association of American Medical Colleges, representing medical schools, is asking, can psychedelic drugs, once banned, help relieve mental illness?

Now that Miami University's Andrew Jones, assistant professor of chemical, paper and biomedical engineering, has successfully manufactured psilocybin — the main ingredient in magic mushrooms — in a lab and licensed the technology to PsyBio Therapeutics, he's focusing on the development of psilocybin derivatives that don't include the hallucinogenic trip.

Miami University and UC to develop and test psychedelic drug derivatives

In a partnership with the University of Cincinnati's Eric Wohleb, associate professor of pharmacology and systems physiology at the College of Medicine, Jones will give Wohleb's lab the compounds to test on mice.

"We're looking forward to scaling some of those up and getting them to collaborators like Eric and several others around the country that are looking to test them in their models and things they're really good at to see what we can learn," says Jones.

Fiona Kanis, a 2023 Miami University Graduate with a BS in Biomedical Engineering and Professor Andrew Jones work with psilocybin in the lab. — Fiona Kanis, a 2023 Miami University graduate with a B.S. in biomedical engineering, and Professor Andrew Jones work with psilocybin in the lab.

Jones hopes to start clinical trials with the psilocybin derivatives in people in one to two years. He's also studying the effects of ayahuasca tea and a compound that's secreted from a gland on a toad, detailed in this article.

"This would be kind of the first pass of whether or not we see any sort of beneficial effects of some of the compounds," says Wohleb. "There are a few hurdles to jump through as far as DEA regulations and those types of things that we’re going to have to take care of."

One in four people in the U.S. suffer from mental illness. The thinking is these compounds could treat depression, anxiety, PTSD, obsessive compulsive disorder, addiction, anorexia, bulimia and more.

"We know it (psychedelic compounds) doesn't look like the Zolofts and Prozacs of the world, and that's what really excites me is that this gives people hope," says Jones.