ARPA-H Launches $100M Effort to “Demystify” Mental Health and Catalyse Rapid-Acting Behavioural Health Therapeutics, Including Psychedelics

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) has carved out up to $100M for an initiative that aims to develop objective measures of mental and behavioural health, it announced today.

The initiative, dubbed Evidence-Based Validation & Innovation for Rapid Therapeutics in Behavioral Health (EVIDENT), is the first major mental health-related moonshot to emerge from ARPA-H. It takes on the ambitious and elusive goal loosely described elsewhere as ‘precision psychiatry’, aiming to not only overcome challenges associated with a reliance on subjective endpoints, but also to predict and observe how patients respond to rapid-acting interventions before and during treatment.

While EVIDENT is not an entirely psychedelic project, both the structure of the initiative and the agency’s language around it suggest that the class, which it opts to refer to as ‘neuroplastogens’, is expected to feature prominently, alongside neuromodulation and digital therapeutics.

Indeed, ARPA-H identifies neuroplastogens as an example of novel approaches to treating mental health disorders, and guidance to potential awardees (PDF) notes that the class may include ketamine, ibogaine, psilocybin, LSD, DMT, scopolamine, and others...