Chapters Transcript Video Psychedelic Drugs Hi, I'm Amy Case, a palliative medicine physician and researcher and Lee Foundation endowed chair of supportive and palliative Care at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. Our team opened our cannabis clinic in the year 2016 and our ketamine clinic in the year 2020. There's quite a bit of robust research on cannabis, including some of the work we've done here. Roswell Park that has shown that cannabis can be effective in some studies for for pain, specifically neuropathic pain, and also effective for chemotherapy induced nausea and vomiting, and some of the other symptoms we see some patients feel that it's helpful for, but the literature is still a little mixed on some of the other symptoms. And our ketamine clinic also has been very successful, where we've managed patients who have had. Mood issues, depression, and even suicidal ideation where when patients get these medications they have a dramatic improvement in their mood symptoms. In a recent study that I was part of here at Roswell Park looking at 1600 patients who were undergoing. Immunotherapy for cancer, 18% of them we found were using cannabis anyway. It's really important for us to educate those patients on the safe use and how it interacts with some of the other medications they're on, specifically immunotherapy, and we found that the survival between the two groups, the cannabis users and the non-cannabis users, was similar. So that is a new finding that we just published it, it. Go at the most recent meeting, we are exploring psychedelics for cancer pain as another tool in the toolbox because right now for to treat pain, often we're using drugs like opioids which can have adverse effects. The whole point of substances is that they do bring out some deep subconscious feelings and thoughts, but the beauty of it when in a controlled environment for a clinical trial is that. They can be quite safe. We have a team of professionals that do preparatory and integrative psychotherapy along with the drug. Patients may not experience uh hallucinogenic side effects using low doses, but those who may have any changes to the way that they're thinking, we will have ways to support them through that process. And compared to other drugs that are given, these drugs are actually quite safe. I'm William Alexander. I'm assistant professor in the department of supportive and palliative care at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. Psychedelics are showing a lot of promise for conditions that afflict patients with cancer. Typically psychedelics are administered at very high doses which induce a mystical type of experience. These experiences can be accompanied by feelings of profound joy. Love, uh, connection psilocybin is a classical psychedelic. It acts on the 5HT2A receptor, which is a serotonin receptor. It is the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, although what is commonly used in clinical trials are synthetic forms or purified forms of psilocybin. Psychedelics like psilocybin, uh, shown. And for a lot of conditions like major depressive disorder treatment resistant depression, generalized anxiety disorder, which all affect patients with cancer, it also shows promise for conditions pretty specific to cancer like existential distress as well as cancer related pain. There is uh a risk though for challenging experiences. These are intense experiences and they. May not be the best experience for everybody. There is interest in, uh, alternative approaches, for example, using lower doses which minimize the psychedelic experience but attempt to harness some of the benefits of psychedelics. Here at Roswell Park, we are pursuing a trial exploring the safety and tolerability of low dose psilocybin for patients with cancer related pain. This is going to be a low minimally hallucinogenic dose given over the course of 4 weeks once weekly. We will be enrolling approximately 20 patients. They, uh, will need to have an advanced or otherwise, uh, incurable solid or hematologic cancer as well as pain related to the cancer, and their pain regimen has been escalated to, uh, opioids. If you have a patient interested in that you feel qualifies for the study, please feel free to reach out to our team. Created by
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