The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration recently gave The Ohio State University the go-ahead to grow whole psychedelic mushrooms for research. It's the first time a university has been granted such a license.
Jason Slot, an associate professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at OSU, calls the fungi an "untapped resource."
"Fungal chemistry in general is is experiencing its own renaissance. So this is a treasure trove, potentially, of novel chemicals to find," Slot said.
Slot said until now, clinical trials have been limited to using either synthetic or purified and extracted psilocybin, the main psychoactive chemical in "magic" mushrooms.
The new license will allow Slot and his colleagues to study what's known as the "entourage effect," where different chemicals that are made by the fungus may be enhancing or affecting the psychedelic experience.
The hope is the research could lead to new treatments for mental health issues and perhaps a host of other maladies.
"We could be looking at anti-cancer properties or anti-microbial properties. There's a lot of things that fungi make that influence the other things in their environment, the other organisms in their environment," Slot said. "We can't necessarily predict what those functions are going to be until we start testing."
Mental health research company Inner State is providing funding for the project.
