Neuropharmacology
September 11, 2026
Laura Rullo, Loredana Maria Losapio, Hela Mrizak et al.
Alcohol use disorder (AUD) represents a major public health challenge, with current pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments showing limited efficacy. Recent clinical evidence suggests that MDMA-assisted psychotherapy may be effective for AUD, although concerns remain regarding its safety and potential for recreational use. This study investigated the effects of MDMA administration on...
Research Square
March 31, 2026
Marcus W. Meinhardt, Ivan Skorodumov, Florian Walter et al.
Abstract Alcohol use disorder is a major global health problem, and current treatments often fail to produce lasting reductions in harmful drinking1,2. Psychedelic-assisted therapies may promote durable behavioural change by enhancing brain plasticity during emotionally meaningful experiences, but progress has been limited by a lack of experimental models that capture these context-dependent...
Psychopharmacology
November 15, 2025
Elisabetta Ciccocioppo, Sara Massetti, Marcus W. Meinhardt et al.
Alcohol use disorder (AUD) represents a significant medical challenge, with available therapeutic approaches having limited efficacy. Emerging data suggest that psychedelic compounds could represent an alternative treatment for AUD. Among this class of molecules, ketamine, a dissociative psychedelic, shows promising properties. It reduces alcohol drinking in rodents and in humans it is used to...
Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology
May 1, 2025
Marcus W. Meinhardt, Ivan Skorodumov, Jérôme Jeanblanc et al.
8 citations
The drug development process in psychiatry faces significant challenges due to low reproducibility rates in animal testing, which often leads to translation failures. To address this issue, we introduce a new approach in psychiatric drug development: a preclinical randomized controlled trial (preRCT). To demonstrate its potential utility, we conducted a multi-center preRCT using the alcohol...
Psychopharmacology
July 1, 2023
Federica Benvenuti, D Colombo, L Soverchia et al.
14 citations
For most psychiatric conditions, including alcohol use disorder (AUD), FDA-approved pharmacological treatments are limited and their efficacy is restricted to only certain subgroups of patients. Scientific interest in the potential of psychedelic drugs has dramatically increased because of clinical preliminary evidence of efficacy in treating various psychiatric disorders. One of the most...