Psychedelic research timeline
Anxiety Disorders: the psychedelic research timeline
Anxiety research connects the old end-of-life LSD studies, the modern psilocybin cancer trials and today’s generalised-anxiety development programmes. The headline is not one compound winning, but a long shift from small psychotherapy studies to pivotal drug development.
Milestones are editorially selected from Blossom’s research catalogue. Future markers are limited to important trials with dated public guidance and are shown as planned, not promised.
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Illness-related anxiety
1965 to 2000The first era develops around cancer and end-of-life distress.1965-01
Spring Grove: distress at the end of life
Pahnke, Grof, Richards and Kurland run an eight-year LSD-assisted psychotherapy programme for people with terminal cancer.
The most sustained clinical programme of the first era, and the one whose questions the modern field went back to first. Existential distress in life-threatening illness is exactly the indication the 2008 revival trial chose, forty-three years later.
The design limitations are the same as everywhere else on this lane, but the programme is unusual in two respects: it ran long enough to develop a treatment protocol rather than a single observation, and it kept going for eight years after Sandoz stopped supplying the drug, on stock held by the US National Institute of Mental Health.
The clinical return
2001 to 2021OCD, cancer distress and modern LSD therapy reopen patient research.2001-11
University of Arizona
First modern patient trial
Francisco Moreno opens a nine-patient dose-escalation study in obsessive-compulsive disorder in Arizona.
The first registered psilocybin trial in Blossom’s set, and the study that reopens human research after the Schedule I freeze. Nine patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, a modified dose-escalation design, and a published result in 2006.
Nine patients is not an evidence base. What matters is that it was permitted at all. Every one of the 331 trials that follow on this canvas depends on someone having got a Schedule I protocol past an institutional review board and the DEA first, and it is worth noticing that the indication was OCD rather than depression. Twenty-five years later, OCD is still one of the least-served indications on this timeline.
2008-01
MAPS
The first modern LSD trial opens
Peter Gasser runs a MAPS-sponsored study of LSD-assisted psychotherapy for anxiety in life-threatening illness. It is the first controlled LSD trial in roughly forty years.
Twelve patients, in Switzerland, with a non-profit sponsor and no commercial interest attached. Everything the modern field has done with LSD descends from this study getting approved.
The indication is the Spring Grove question asked again with a control group: does LSD-assisted therapy reduce anxiety in people facing death? The answer took four years to collect and another two to publish.
Note who is not here. No pharmaceutical company sponsors an LSD trial until 2022, fourteen years after the compound returns to the clinic. The revival was carried by a patient-advocacy non-profit and a Swiss academic hospital, which is worth remembering when the capital lane fills up later.
2014-07
J Nerv Ment Dis
First modern results published
The Gasser trial reports reduced anxiety with no serious adverse events. It becomes the most-cited LSD clinical paper in the database.
744 citations, which for a twelve-patient study says more about how empty the field was than about the strength of the result. The sample is small, the active-placebo comparison used 20 micrograms rather than an inert control, and the primary outcome was self-reported anxiety.
What it did was reopen the door. A modern ethics committee had approved LSD dosing, the safety record held, and the results were publishable in a mainstream journal. Every trial to the right of this point had an easier approval conversation because this one existed.
A twelve-month follow-up published in 2024 reported that the reductions were sustained, which is unusual and worth its own scrutiny given the absence of a control group at that stage.
2016-11
Journal of Psychopharmacology
Two randomised cancer trials publish together
Hopkins and NYU report large, sustained reductions in depression and anxiety in patients with life-threatening cancer.
Two independent randomised trials, run at Johns Hopkins and NYU, publish in the same issue of the Journal of Psychopharmacology on the same day. Both report substantial reductions in depression and anxiety in patients facing life-threatening cancer, sustained for months after a single session. They are the two most-cited psilocybin papers in Blossom, at roughly 2,100 and 1,700 citations.
Simultaneous publication of two separately conducted trials pointing the same way is about as strong as an early signal gets. It is also where the modern field’s credibility was built: from this point on, psilocybin research is treated as mainstream psychiatry rather than a fringe interest.
The caveat that applies to both is the blinding one. Participants receiving an active dose almost always know it, and in a population confronting mortality the expectation effect is not a small nuisance variable. Neither team hid this. Later programmes have been less consistently candid about it.
2021-03
The blinding problem gets named
Two 2021 papers set out how badly expectancy confounds psychedelic trials, and one tests it with self-blinded citizen scientists.
A methodological critique of blinding and expectancy confounds in psychedelic randomised trials publishes alongside a citizen-science study in which participants blinded themselves to their own microdoses. The self-blinding study found that people who correctly guessed they were taking a placebo improved about as much as people taking the drug.
This is the most uncomfortable body of work on the canvas and it deserves its place. Every efficacy claim above and below this point rests on trials in which most participants could tell which arm they were in. That does not make the results wrong. It means the effect sizes are measuring drug plus expectation, and no trial design in the field has yet cleanly separated the two.
Regulators know this. It is one reason the pivotal programmes on the right of this canvas use low-dose active comparators rather than inert placebo, and one reason a positive Phase 3 will be argued over rather than settled.
Generalised anxiety at scale
2022 onwardsLSD and DMT analogues move into larger indication-specific programmes.2022-06
Definium Therapeutics
MM120 Phase 2b in generalised anxiety
198 adults, 22 US sites, five arms. A single 100 microgram dose cuts anxiety scores by 5 points more than placebo at four weeks.
The first commercial LSD programme, and the study that turned the compound into an asset. A dose-ranging design tested 25, 50, 100 and 200 micrograms against placebo, and only the two higher doses separated from placebo.
That is a useful result in both directions. It supports the 100 microgram dose the Phase 3 programme carries forward, and it quietly undercuts the low-dose claims on the microdosing lane: at 25 and 50 micrograms this trial found nothing.
The blinding problem is unavoidable and worth stating. 92.5% of participants on 100 micrograms reported visual perceptual changes against 10.3% on placebo. Nobody in the higher arms was in real doubt about what they had taken, and that is true of every psychedelic trial on this canvas.
2023-02
Biological Psychiatry
Randomised, blinded, placebo-controlled
The Basel anxiety trial reports a positive result under a double-blind placebo-controlled design, the first for LSD in the modern era.
This is the design the 2014 revival paper could not manage: randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, with a crossover and a six-year run from first patient to publication.
It matters because the rest of the anxiety evidence base is open-label. Expectation moves anxiety scores more than almost any other outcome in psychiatry, so a blinded comparison is the only version of this result that survives a sceptical reading.
It came out of a university hospital rather than a company. Both of the strongest clinical results on this canvas, this one and the ADHD null, were produced by the same Basel group, which is a reasonable argument for who the field should be funding.
2024-03
Helus Pharma
A deuterated analogue enters Phase 2 in anxiety
CYB004 is tested in generalised anxiety disorder with depressive symptoms, the first Phase 2 of a DMT analogue in an anxiety indication.
Anxiety is a departure. Almost everything else on this canvas targets depression, addiction or neurological injury, and generalised anxiety disorder has largely been left to the SSRIs and to therapy. Choosing it signals a sponsor looking for space rather than following the crowd.
The candidate is a deuterated DMT, so this milestone sits in the analogues lane rather than with the parent compound. Thirty-six participants completed enrolment in September 2025, which is a proof-of-concept sample: large enough to see a substantial effect, far too small to rule one out.
The programme has also changed hands, moving to Helus Pharma. Ownership changes at this stage are common and are usually about capital rather than science, but they add delivery risk to a readout that was already exploratory.
2024-12
Definium Therapeutics
First Phase 3 LSD trial ever run
The first patient is dosed in Voyage, the first pivotal trial of LSD in the compound’s eighty-six-year history.
Eighty-six years after synthesis, LSD enters a registrational programme. Nothing before this point on the canvas was ever intended to support a marketing application, including the entire first era.
Voyage is one of three. Panorama followed in January 2025 as the second pivotal study in generalised anxiety, and Emerge opened in April 2025 in major depression, all of them with the same orally disintegrating tablet formulation.
Running three pivotal trials in parallel is a capital-intensive bet on a single Phase 2b. It compresses the timeline and it removes the option of learning from the first readout before committing to the next two.
2025-10
JAMA
Phase 2b results reach print
The dose-finding study is published two years after it closed, and ten months after the pivotal programme opened.
Publication lag again. The three Phase 3 trials were designed, funded and dosing patients before the field could read the trial they were built on.
That sequence is normal in drug development and it still deserves stating on a canvas like this, because it means external scrutiny of the evidence arrives after the decisions it might have informed.
2026-03
Helus Pharma
The anxiety readout arrives
Topline data from the Phase 2 of the deuterated DMT analogue in generalised anxiety disorder are reported on company guidance.
Blossom’s record marks this readout as delivered in the first quarter of 2026. What it does not yet contain is a peer-reviewed publication or a registry results posting, and until one of those appears the finding exists only as a company statement.
That distinction is worth holding on to across this whole canvas. Company-reported topline data have a poor record of surviving contact with a full dataset, not because sponsors lie but because the framing is chosen before the scrutiny arrives. Blossom lists it because it happened, not because it is established.
2026-06
SAMATI
Social anxiety results publish
An academic randomised trial of MDMA-assisted therapy in social anxiety disorder reports, open-label and wait-list controlled.
The SAMATI study publishes in June 2026: randomised, but open-label and controlled against a wait list rather than against a placebo. A wait-list control tells you how much better treated participants did than untreated ones, which includes everything about being in a trial and receiving attention.
It is the weakest of the common control designs and it is being used here because it is honest about what it can show. After 2024, small academic groups are less inclined to claim more than their design supports.
It also lands in the same indication as both commercial R-MDMA programmes, three months after one of them reported. Social anxiety is quietly becoming the second front for this compound.
2026-09
Definium Therapeutics
plannedFirst pivotal LSD readout expected
Voyage topline is guided for early Q3 2026. It is the first time LSD has ever been tested against a registrational endpoint.
Everything to the left of this marker is preparation. Eighty-eight years, 441 papers, 51 trials, one withdrawal of supply and one prohibition, and the compound has still never produced a result that a regulator could approve.
A positive Voyage plus a positive Panorama would complete the anxiety package and open an NDA pathway. A negative Voyage would leave three pivotal trials, two indications and a Breakthrough designation resting on a single Phase 2b that the field only read ten months ago.
The date is company guidance rather than a registry-confirmed completion, and the Emerge readout has already passed its own guidance without appearing. Treat this as the optimistic case.
Anxiety Disorders
From illness-related anxiety to the first pivotal LSD programme
Research Landscape
What the registered trials connected to Anxiety Disorders look like when you line them up. Counts come from Blossom’s trial records as of August 2026.
How fast is Anxiety Disorders research growing?
SourcedRegistered trials by recorded study-start year; 12 earlier trials began before 2012. Click a year for the running total.
Don't read as total research effort: only registered trials with a recorded start date are counted (111 of 112 tracked). Recent years under-count because of registration lag; striped bars are still filling in or are planned starts.
What's live right now, and what stopped?
SourcedRegistry status of all 112 Anxiety Disorders trials Blossom tracks. Orange marks trials recruiting or opening.
- Recruiting or opening
- 4238%
- Underway, not recruiting
- 76%
- Completed
- 4641%
- Stopped early
- 1110%
- Unknown / other
- 65%
Don't read stopped trials as failures: trials end early for funding, recruitment, and strategy reasons too. Status is as last synced from the registry; some 'recruiting' trials may already have finished.
Which compounds carry the Anxiety Disorders research?
SourcedTrials per compound. Orange marks the most-studied compound.
Don't read shares as adding to 100%: a trial testing several compounds counts once per compound, and placebo comparator arms are not shown. Trial volume signals research attention, not evidence quality.
Publication Landscape
How the 777 papers Blossom links to Anxiety Disorders line up by year, compound and journal. This is the psychedelic-relevant literature in Blossom's records as of August 2026, not the condition's full medical literature.
How has Anxiety Disorders research grown?
SourcedTracked papers by publication year; 39 earlier papers published before 2012. Click a year for the running total.
Don't read as total output: only the 777 of 777 tracked papers with a recorded publication date are counted, and these are the psychedelic-relevant papers Blossom tracks, not a complete bibliography. The current year is still filling in.
Which compounds shape Anxiety Disorders?
SourcedTracked papers per compound. Orange marks the largest literature.
A paper studying several compounds counts once per compound, and placebo comparator arms are not shown. These are the psychedelic-relevant papers Blossom tracks.
Where is Anxiety Disorders research published?
SourcedTracked papers per journal. Orange marks the most-used journal.
Counts the journal recorded on each tracked paper; papers without a journal on file are omitted. Blossom tracks psychedelic-relevant papers rather than each journal's full catalogue.