Guy Goodwin

Guy Goodwin completed his medical degree and DPhil in physiology at the University of Oxford and, following training in psychiatry, worked as Clinical Scientist at the MRC Brain Metabolism Unit in Edinburgh for 10 years. He moved back to Oxford as head of the department of psychiatry and subsequently as a senior research fellow. His work has always included care of outpatients along with a primary commitment to research. He is a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and has previously held the position of President of the British Association for Psychopharmacology, President of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP), and Senior Investigator on the faculty of UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). He is a Thomson Reuters highly cited researcher (top 1% in field).

His research interests have been focused on the treatment of mood disorder and, increasingly, the potential to improve treatment using new technology and new drugs, notably psychedelics. He was part of the team that developed Compass Pathways’ phase IIb clinical trial and acted initially as its coordinating principal investigator.

Can we re-medicalise the psychedelic experience?

A proportion of patients with major depressive disorder fail two or more antidepressant treatments and are considered to have treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Recent attention has turned to psilocybin and other psychedelic compounds as potential rapidly acting and durable episodic treatments for psychiatric disorders including depression.

COMP 001 was the first large, multinational, randomized controlled trial to evaluate the investigational drug COMP360, a proprietary pharmaceutical-grade synthetic psilocybin formulation, optimized for stability and purity, developed by the sponsor COMPASS Pathfinder Ltd in patients with TRD. It suggested an acceptable efficacy signal and good tolerability(1). Two phase 3 trials are ongoing to replicate and extend these findings in a larger clinical sample.

The interpretation of differences from placebo in clinical trials and the likely mode of action of psilocybin are of great interest and will be discussed in detail.