Overview of the field & contribution
Overview
Mental health disorders place a substantial burden on individuals and healthcare systems, with hundreds of millions of people worldwide affected by depression alone. Better treatments are needed, as current medications are not effective for everyone. Psychedelics have the potential to provide an alternative or complement to existing treatments and are currently being actively investigated. My research focuses primarily on classical psychedelics, with some work also involving medicinal cannabis.
Practical contribution
My contributions to classical psychedelics include original research and the development and curation of pharmacological resources and tools, such as the PPGx knowledgebase, which brings together psychedelic pharmacology and pharmacogenomics literature and uses models to predict how genetic variation and concomitant medications may affect drug exposure. This particular work aims to guide future research and potentially inform pharmacogenetic guidelines for these drugs. In medicinal cannabis, my contributions include investigating its use in pain management and paediatric epilepsy using real-world cohorts.