Lykos Therapeutics (Formerly MAPS PBC) Announces Publication Examining the Effects of MDMA-Assisted Therapy on Emotional Coping Skills and Self-Experience in PTSD

• Participants with severe PTSD who received MDMA-assisted therapy demonstrated significant improvements in self-experience
• Improvements in self-compassion associated with MDMA-assisted therapy were independent of PTSD symptom improvement 

Excerpt from the Press Release:

SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Lykos Therapeutics (formerly MAPS Public Benefit Corporation) (“Lykos”), a company dedicated to transforming mental healthcare, announced that PLOS ONE has published the first comparison of the effects of investigational MDMA-assisted therapy and therapy with placebo on emotional coping skills and self-experience in adults with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”). The study explored how changes in self-experience impacted PTSD scores in the Company’s Phase 3, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study (MAPP1), previously published in Nature Medicine. Results showed that compared to therapy with placebo, MDMA-assisted therapy participants had a statistically significant greater improvement in all self-experience measures.

“People who have histories of having been traumatized as children within their caregiving systems are particularly prone to developing major deficits in emotion regulation and often develop a self-identity of being worthless and defective,” said Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., Phase 3 investigator, president of the Trauma Research Foundation and author of The Body Keeps the Score.¹ “When these people are being treated for their PTSD, their lack of a sense of safety and difficulties with trust can be major obstacles to successful completion of treatment; these deficits often prevent treatment from being successful. In this study, we observed that MDMA-assisted therapy was more effective than psychotherapy alone in improving a range of problems with self-experience that are associated with treatment failure.”

Trauma-focused talk therapy is considered a first-line treatment for PTSD, however the success rates with treatment have been limited by several factors.^2,3 At least a quarter of patients drop out of treatment, up to one-half are left with lingering symptoms,^4,5,6 and even those who respond to treatment often experience lingering challenges with emotional regulation, impulse control and interpersonal functioning.^7,8,9 As multiple studies have shown that reduced self-capacities interfere with successful completion of talk therapy for PTSD, the goal of this analysis was to assess if MDMA-assisted therapy or therapy with placebo had a significant impact on validated measures of self-experience.

Click the button below to read the entire Press Release:

Continue Reading The Press Release