‘No Prejudice, No Hype’: Florence Butlen-Ducuing on Europe’s Psychedelic Renaissance

From a long stint at the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) Office of Therapies for Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders to her present-day practice as a clinical psychiatrist at leading cancer research hospital Gustave Roussy, Dr. Florence Butlen-Ducuing has had a front-row seat to the evolution of psychedelic research and drug development in Europe.

A clinical psychiatrist with a background in neurosciences, Dr. Florence Butlen-Ducuing found her way to the EMA’s Human Medicines Division, where she became particularly interested in trial design challenges for psychiatry programs. Through that work, Butlen-Ducuing became familiar with the resurgence in trial and drug development activity around psychedelics, and she worked on a number of publications with former EMA colleagues and experts from the field on how the class of drugs might fit within the European regulatory framework (see, for example, Butlen-Ducuing et al., 2025, Silva et al., 2025, and Browne et al., 2025).

In this interview with Psychedelic Alpha’s Josh Hardman, Butlen-Ducuing draws on her experience as a clinician and her previous role as a scientific specialist within EMA to reflect on the so-called psychedelic renaissance, the European landscape, and the potential role of psychedelics in palliative care in cancer patients.

Note: Butlen-Ducuing is a former EMA employee. She is currently working as a Clinical Psychiatrist at Gustave Roussy and is also part of the MOODS INSERM research Unit at Paris-Saclay University. The views expressed in this interview are her own...