National Ministries & Federal Agencies

Canada�s federal health research funding agency setting national biomedical and health-services research priorities.

The Chief Scientist Office (CSO) of the Scottish Government funds NHS and health research across Scotland, and has supported University of Edinburgh evaluability work on ketamine-assisted therapy and the development of the Scottish Psychedelic Research Group to build Scotland’s capacity for psychedelic-assisted therapy studies.

U.S. federally directed defense-health research program office administering targeted grants, including mental-health priorities.

Brazil's National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) is the country's primary public funding agency for scientific research, providing grants, scholarships, and R&D support to universities and research institutions nationwide. CNPq ranks among the top global funders of psychedelic science, having supported seminal ayahuasca clinical trials, pharmacological studies, and productivity fellowships for researchers who established Brazil as a world leader in psychedelic psychiatry.

CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior) is Brazil's federal agency for graduate education improvement, providing scholarships, postdoctoral fellowships, and institutional research grants to universities nationwide. Ranked among the top-six global funders of psychedelic research in a 2023 Scopus analysis, CAPES has financed ayahuasca neuroscience studies, clinical investigations, and postdoctoral programmes that underpin Brazil's internationally recognised psychedelic research ecosystem.

The Czech Health Research Council (AZV ČR) is an organisational component of the Czech Ministry of Health responsible for funding applied health research, distributing over 1 billion CZK annually across approximately 90 supported projects per year. It provided the primary grant for the PSIKET001 trial — a landmark double-blind comparison of psilocybin versus ketamine for treatment-resistant depression at the National Institute of Mental Health — with a total budget of 12 million CZK.

The European Medicines Agency is a decentralised agency of the European Union. It coordinates the scientific evaluation, supervision and safety monitoring of medicines for human and veterinary use across the EU. Its headquarters are in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is the pioneering Western government funder of large-scale psychedelic clinical trials, having provided approximately €5 million to the EPIsoDE study — the first government-funded Phase 2 psilocybin trial for treatment-resistant major depression — conducted at the Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim and Charité Berlin. Germany subsequently became the first EU country to establish a psilocybin compassionate access program for treatment-resistant depression.

Canadian federal health regulator administering controlled access and oversight pathways relevant to psychedelic therapies.

The Health Research Board (HRB) is Ireland's primary statutory health research funding agency, which has awarded grants to Trinity College Dublin's Psychedelic Research Group to investigate psychedelics' immune effects in depression and the feasibility of psilocybin for cocaine-use disorder. The HRB also funds the KARMA-DEP(2) ketamine trial for treatment-resistant depression at St Patrick's University Hospital in Dublin, making it a key enabler of Ireland's emerging psychedelic medicine ecosystem.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is a UK government agency that regulates medicines, medical devices and blood components for transfusion. It also supports public health by assessing the safety, quality and efficacy of healthcare products, and by enabling innovation and research. Its contact address is in Canary Wharf, London.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is the principal US federal agency for cancer research and training, one of 27 institutes within the National Institutes of Health, with an annual budget exceeding $7 billion. In the psychedelic field, NCI has supported trials exploring psilocybin-assisted therapy for cancer-related demoralization and chronic pain in survivors, as well as ketamine infusion to prevent depression in patients undergoing treatment for pancreatic and head-and-neck cancers.

NIH center that accelerates the translation of biomedical discoveries into health solutions. NCATS' Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program funds the infrastructure at academic medical centers that supports emerging research including psychedelic-assisted therapy trials.

U.S. federal institute focused on complementary/integrative research and evidence programs including psychedelic-adjacent contexts.

The National Center for PTSD (NC-PTSD) is a US Department of Veterans Affairs centre of excellence for research, education, and training on post-traumatic stress disorder, operating across seven VA medical centre sites with a focus on evidence-based assessment and treatment. The Centre has supported mechanistic ketamine research in military and veteran populations, including an investigation of AMPA receptor blockade on ketamine’s anti-suicidal effects relevant to veteran mental health crises.

The National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) was a National Institutes of Health centre that funded biomedical research infrastructure, clinical and translational science programmes, and shared research resources until its dissolution in 2011, when its programmes were reorganised primarily into the new National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). NCRR infrastructure and clinical research awards supported early NIH-funded investigations into glutamate-modulating medications for major depressive disorder that laid the mechanistic groundwork for understanding ketamine’s rapid antidepressant effects.

The National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas) is Argentina’s principal government agency for promoting science and technology, funding over 11,000 researchers and 10,000 doctoral students across a nationwide network of research institutes and centres. CONICET supported the NATMICRO study, a naturalistic observational investigation of the psychological and cognitive effects of self-administered psilocybin microdosing conducted in Argentina.

UK public health research funder and implementation infrastructure supporting NHS-oriented evidence generation.

U.S. federal institute defining mental-health research agendas and evidence-generation priorities including psychedelic-relevant studies.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) is a US National Institutes of Health institute dedicated to research on alcohol use disorder and its public health impacts, supporting approximately $500 million in research annually. NIAAA has funded studies exploring both ketamine administration for acute alcohol use disorder in the emergency department and psilocybin-assisted therapy to understand the neurobehavioral mechanisms underlying alcohol use disorder treatment.

U.S. federal institute setting addiction-research priorities and portfolios, including psychedelic-related investigations.

U.S. federal biomedical research agency shaping institute-level priority and research funding architecture.

Australian national regulator for scheduling, prescribing pathways, and safety oversight including MDMA/psilocybin psychiatry contexts.

U.S. federal veterans health authority with explicit psychedelic-adjacent clinical research and care-implementation activity through VA research and care networks.

US federal regulator for drug development and safety oversight, including psychedelic clinical-investigation pathways.

U.S. Veterans Affairs research authority overseeing national veteran-focused clinical research programs including psychedelic-adjacent initiatives.