New Orleans Hosts Psychedelic Research Conference Double-Header
Drums, tambourines and shouts of joy filled the New Orleans streets as researchers and industry professionals crowded into hotel conference rooms to hear the latest developments in psychedelic science. Mardi Gras had just passed, but the city was still alive with music and celebration.
From February 26th to March 1st, roughly 200 people joined in on the fun while attending the 6th Annual Psychedelic Therapeutics and Drug Development Conference (PTDD) and the 3rd meeting of the International Society for Psychedelic Research (ISRP) which took place over the last week of February.
This was the first year the two conferences coincided with each other, providing some overlap for those interested in both industry and scientific research. Both meetings were run by Arrowhead Sci-Tech Conferences & Events, which manages the annual PTDD meeting. Many attendees were presenting information about their companies or their latest findings in neuroscience research, with some presenters doing talks at both conferences on different topics.
Psychedelic Therapeutics and Drug Development Conference
The PTDD conference took place February 26th and 27th, and focused largely on scientific industry and real world implications surrounding psychedelic therapeutics.
“The record turnout at the Psychedelic Therapeutics & Drug Development Conference suggests a big step forward for the field of psychedelic research,” said John Wasliff, Managing Director
Arrowhead Sci-Tech Conferences & Events. “This year brought together an exceptional mix of psychedelic drug development companies, clinical researchers, trial sites, regulators, and investors, all focused on the work of turning promising psychedelic science into safe therapies for those in need.”
This event highlighted the progress being made towards regulatory approval of a variety of psychedelics, including classic psychedelics like psilocybin and other drugs like ketamine and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). Presentations included discussion on psychedelics’ ability to treat various conditions, including commonly researched neuropsychiatric conditions such as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, but also non-neuropsychiatric indications like inflammatory/autoimmune disorders, brain injury, pain, and headaches.
Attendees included drug development and biotech companies of all stages, including Compass Pathways, which is in late stage clinical trials for an investigational psilocybin therapy for mental health conditions using a synthesized formulation of psilocybin called COMP360. Also presenting was Xylo Bio, which is developing a novel class of small molecules to target receptors that promote neuroplasticity and launching their first-in-human studies this year. In addition, many other players in the psychedelic industry were represented, from venture capitalists like Lionheart Ventures to the prior art library, Porta Sophia.
Josh Hardman, founder and editor of Psychedelic Alpha, gave a presentation on the “State of the Psychedelic Industry.” The bulk of his presentation focused on exploring some of the open questions the field is grappling with across drug development, funding dynamics, clinical rollout policy reform and pre-approval access.
“The gathering came at a pivotal time given Compass Pathways had shared its Phase 3 data the week prior,” Hardman said. “This year looks set to be very busy for psychedelic drug development more broadly. That meant there was plenty of impetus for discussion both on and off stage. Some of these are big questions, not intended to be rhetorical. I think many of them will begin to be answered in the coming months and years as we expect to see the first FDA-approved psychedelics come to market.”
The International Society for Psychedelic Research
The ISRP conference, which took place February 27th through March 1st. The Society’s purpose is to provide scientific networking and advancement of empirical science regarding classic psychedelics, largely through providing annual meetings.
The first in-person meeting was held in 2019, before a hiatus from the COVID pandemic, and resumed its biannual status in 2024. Between in-person meetings, ISRP has begun to host virtual conferences, of which the next will be in 2027. The meetings are unique in that they are advertised as “by scientists, for scientists,” to stress the importance of empirical discussion surrounding psychedelics.
ISRP contrasts from that of the PTDD conference in that it is a scientific society of researchers that includes tiers of dues paying members and has its own scientific journal, Psychedelic Medicine. The meeting was also largely academic-based, with a focus on a variety of tracks throughout the three days, including but not limited to: clinical design and efficacy, psychedelic-induced plasticity, molecular structure-function relationships, receptor dynamics and circuit-level mechanisms, cognition and psychedelics, and real-world psychedelic use and outcomes. Out of the 48 oral presentations, a large number of those were undergraduates, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows.
“It was great to see that for the very last session nearly everyone was still there and hung on until the end,” Charles Nichols, ISRP President and Professor at Louisiana State University, said. “You don’t necessarily see this with other scientific conferences. I think that is a testament to how valuable the ISRP conference is to the psychedelic research community in general. Another highlight was the number of trainees present who were excited about the science and the field in general.”
One of the final speakers was David Nichols, an adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC. Nichols is often referred to as one of the “founding fathers” of modern psychedelic research and has synthesized hundreds of psychedelic compounds since the beginning of his research in 1969. His presentation was discussing the possibility of LSD metabolites being responsible for shifts in psychedelic experiences across the LSD trip.
The introduction to his talk was done by his son, Charles Nichols, who noted that “without his contributions to the field, many of us would not be in this room today.”
Bringing Psychedelic Science to New Orleans
These two meetings integrated seamlessly into New Orleans. The culture of the city is vibrant and full of life, with a never-ending supply of good food and things to see, but the aboveground psychedelic culture isn’t quite as prominent.
Only this year has the state of Louisiana seen legislation regarding psychedelics. Senate Bill, SB 43, was introduced by District 11 Senator Patrick McMath (R), which aims to create a Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Program under the Department of Health. Similar to recent legislation in New Jersey, this is a research-based approach that focuses on FDA-compliant clinical studies using psilocybin and ibogaine for substance use disorders, treatment-resistant mental health conditions, and PTSD.
Organizations like the Louisiana Psychedelic Society and the Psychedelic Society of New Orleans have been organizing around psychedelics, aiming to engage and educate community members on ongoing decriminalization efforts.
While there may not be a strong push for legal psychedelics in Louisiana, there is a lot of interest in studying psychedelics scientifically. At Louisiana State University, Charles Nichols is conducting research right in New Orleans. His work aims to identify how and why psychedelics produce profound effects on behavior, inflammation and more, across a variety of species. One of his PhD students, Ben Cummins, is researching how different psychedelics engage with the same targets in the brain but produce different experiences. In addition to his research, Cummins is an active member of the New Orleans community.
“It’s nice to be positioned in New Orleans and helping volunteer with the event and seeing new people come to ISRP,” Cummins said. “New Orleans has always been an explosion of color and a cultural landmark with a community of people oriented around the culture of psychedelics, like with music, art and self-expression, but I wouldn’t call it a psychedelic community specifically. I think, in a way, the city attracted the psychedelic conferences to it, rather than the conferences bringing psychedelics to the city.”
Other organizations like the New Orleans BioInnovation Center (NOBIC) saw these conferences as an opportunity to bring some of the programming to the greater community. Together with 2A Biosciences – a Biotech company focused on serotonergic psychedelics – and Nucleate New Orleans – a student-led non-profit organization focusing on innovation in life science research – NOBIC hosted an event spotlighting innovation in New Orleans.
The free event took place on February 26th and hosted a panel of experts in neuroscience research and psychedelic industry, including Hardman and Nichols. The event was well attended with over 70 people across disciplines, including those outside of scientific research.
“The purpose of this was to inform the New Orleans ecosystem about what exactly psychedelic innovation is,” Haley Marcotte, PhD student at Tulane University and Co-Managing Director of Nucleate New Orleans said. “There are a lot of pre-mature ideas of what that looks like so we wanted to inform the general audience of what’s actually going on in that space. People were just more informed about what psychedelic innovation was. I genuinely found that people, and even myself, learned about what that looks like for the global community.”
Nucleate New Orleans will continue to bridge research, industry and community in the area with upcoming events including a networking event specifically for women in science in April and an end of the academic year celebration to bring members together and learn about Nucleate.
The ISRP and PTDD conferences are set to continue with in-person meetings, but it’s to be determined if they will continue in New Orleans.