Preclinical Phase II Testing of Psilocybin in Alcohol Addiction and Epigenetic and Neuroimaging Studies on the Mode of Action
Worldwide more than 2 billion people consume alcohol. Nearly 60 million EU citizens engage in harmful drinking and 23 million Europeans are suffering from alcohol addiction. Approved pharmacological treatments for alcoholism are limited in their effectiveness, and new drugs that can be translated into the clinic are warranted. In the last decade there was considerable enthusiasm that advances in the neuroscience of alcohol addiction would soon translate into mechanistically novel alcoholism therapies. However, several novel mechanisms that appeared to hold great promise based on preclinical data failed to translate to the human condition. In our Psi-Alc proposal we will attempt to improve the reliability of preclinical academic research as well as enhance the chance of clinical translatability of our findings. Our consortium is interested in the neurobiological underpinnings of alcohol addiction and the development of new treatment possibilities...