Psychedelic-assisted therapy offers new hope for people with advanced cancer

Breakthrough Team Grants: Psychedelic-assisted cancer therapy

[Dr Linda Carlson, a cancer researcher, appears on screen. She is sitting in a chair and pinning a Canadian Cancer Society daffodil pin to the lapel of her jacket.]

Words on screen: Dr Linda Carlson. Professor of Oncology Cumming School of Medicine

Dr Carlson: I’m so excited about this research because it has the potential to transform end-of-life care for millions of people and their family members with advanced cancer.

So it’s really exciting that we’re going to bring together everybody across Canada in the research space, the clinicians who treat patients, students in training, all the people who are interested in psychedelics as a potential treatment for people with cancer.

So first we’re going to identify everyone working in this space; we’re going to bring them all together.

[Dr Carlson is sitting at a table in front of a laptop, speaking with several other people who are sitting on either side of her.]

We’re going to talk to everybody, including the patients, including the people who make the rules about access to these kinds of therapeutics, and we’re going to build an entire research program.

We’re going to look at top priorities of the patients, of the researchers, of the clinicians, and come up with a whole model – a whole pathway for studying psychedelics for people with cancer.

[Dr Carlson welcomes a patient into her office. There are several shots of the patient doing different wellness techniques under Dr Carlson’s guidance.]

That will culminate in a couple of clinical trials where we’ll investigate in a very rigorous way the effects of psychedelics for helping people with advanced cancer cope with feelings of existential anxiety, fear of death and dying, loss of meaning and purpose in life, anxiety, depression … it has potential for helping manage a lot of these difficult symptoms.

I think the Breakthrough Team Grants are a wonderful opportunity because they’re different than a lot of other grants where it’s just one clinical trial and one study. Here it’s an actual team, a network, over 5 years, where we have the resources to bring together everybody who has a stake in this space. So the patients, the healthcare providers, the researchers, the policymakers… we’re really going to be able to make a profound change with this sort of team.

[Dr Carlson welcomes a patient into her office. The patient lies down on a bed, receiving a blanket and an eye mask.]

So this research has the potential to improve the lives of people with advanced cancer by helping them manage some of the most distressing and difficult-to-treat symptoms that they face. The psychosocial symptoms of fear of the unknown, feeling isolated and disconnected, loss of meaning and purpose, this existential anxiety.

And, you know, as an aside, it’s also really hard for the healthcare providers and the family members to watch people going through this suffering because there’s not much they can do. So having something where, again, it’s like one dose or two doses, and often it has a long-lasting effect that can be very profound.

So, basically, our brain has patterns of communication within it. There’s neural networks that talk to one another that support habitual patterns of, say, negative thinking or depression. When you take one of these psychedelics, through that receptor system, it actually kind of disconnects everything. It opens everything up in the brain. So if you look at some of the fMRI scans, you’ll actually see changes in connectivity when a person takes a psychedelic. So it basically opens up what we call neuroplasticity in the brain. And it makes people more amenable to rewiring the brain and changing habitual patterns of thinking and feeling.

There’s lots of barriers to accessing psychedelic-assisted therapy. So one is the regulatory environment. The only way a person could get access to it is by applying to what’s called the Special Access Program through Health Canada. And it’s a one-at-a-time application process, lots of paperwork, it takes some time, so it’s quite difficult to get access to it.

[The Canadian Cancer Society logo appears on screen.] I want to thank everyone for helping to fund cancer breakthroughs. Your generosity is going to have a profound impact on the way that people experience cancer, especially at the end of their lives.

[The screen transitions to yellow and the Canadian Cancer Society logo appears along with the words IT TAKES A SOCIETY.]