The Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) has announced new grant funding for research into treatment of people with advanced cancer, including research of psychedelic assisted cancer therapy that is led in part by a Queen’s psychiatry professor.
The project, led by Queen’s Dr. Ronald Shore and Dr. Linda Carlson of the University of Calgary, focuses on using psilocybin assisted therapy to help treat feelings of anxiety, depression, and hopelessness that can be commonly experienced by patients living with advanced cancer.
The 5 million dollars granted to the project by the CCS is part of a total $17.9 million broken up into three CCS Breakthrough Team Grants, with each focusing on priorities identified by people with lived experience of cancer.
The grant represents the single largest investment into psychedelic research in Canada.
Dr. Ron Shore from the Queen’s Department of Psychiatry says the funding makes possible a five year program that will allow investigation of needs to be very thorough and will spend a lot of time focused on training for clinicians.
While there are many trials exploring the benefits of using psilocybin as a tool while treating illnesses including cancer, Dr. Shore says this could allow for a more comprehensive, long term look at that when it comes to advanced cancer patients.
“They’re all kind of one and done, you go in, you test something, you leave and this is something that just is going to have much more impact,” Dr. Shore said.
“It’s going to have a lot more thoughtfulness behind it. So as a researcher, it’s super exciting to be part of this.”
The research will explore how psilocybin combined with mindfulness can help advanced cancer patients dealing with demoralization, and will build off other research that Dr. Shore says has shown promising outcomes for patients with other illnesses dealing with demoralization.
Clinical trials likely won’t begin until year three of the project’s term, with the first couple of years being focused on building a network and collaborating with stakeholders and developing a training and education curriculum.
Dr. Shore says officially having those guidelines around training published will be a first, and a huge step forward for the integration of psychedelic assisted treatments in Canada.
“It’ll be the first time that we’ve had evidence-based psilocybin therapy guidelines developed,” Dr. Shore said.
“That would be a real legacy piece from this is we’ll have standard, kind of, practitioner training guidelines… it’ll definitely shift how we think about psychedelic therapy, we’ll have a whole lot more trained and educated people and we’ll know a lot more even just through the first few years of the funding.”
Dr. Shore says when the time comes he doesn’t anticipate finding trial participants to be difficult.
