In Philly and nationwide, interest is rising in psychedelics to treat depression. The FDA released new research guidelines.

When Jason Wallach started researching psychedelic compounds just over a decade ago, he expected he would spend his career laboring in obscurity.

Now the Food and Drug Administration is taking new steps to advise scientists studying these drugs, a sign that the federal government, and society at large, are paying closer attention to his rapidly-growing field of research. Wallach, a professor at Philadelphia’s St. Joseph’s University, develops psychedelic drugs to treat depression and other mental illnesses.

In June, for the first time, the FDA released a draft list of guidelines for conducting clinical research studies with those drugs.

The FDA has been approving studies for these drugs for some time, Wallach said, but the release of guidelines shows that interest in psychedelic compounds is higher than ever.

“They realize there’s a lot of studies going on actively and likely to be a lot more,” he said.

Wallach recalls how not long ago most researchers dismissed the possible therapeutic uses of hallucinogenic drugs like LCD and psilocybin, and more experienced colleagues told him to get out of the field entirely.

“A faculty member told me there was no funding, that people just don’t understand the potential, and that prohibition and the drug war has done so much damage that it’s just a bad career move. I didn’t take that advice,” he said, laughing.

Unique research challenges

The FDA also highlighted the unique challenges of designing effective studies with psychedelic drugs. For example, psychedelic drugs can cause people to experience hallucinations or alter their senses. So blind studies, in which one group of participants receives a drug and the other receives a placebo an effort to generate unbiased results, are more difficult to conduct.

“If you give one group psychedelics and one group a placebo, you’re going to know which is which and they’re going to know which is which,” said Holly Fernandez Lynch, an assistant professor of medical ethics and law at the University of Pennsylvania.