Miraculix Community Research
With our QTests, which allow quantifying the concentration of psychedelic compounds, a big opportunity for research arises. Together with the Psychedelic Substances Research Group from the Charité Berlin, we work on an exciting new project:
Together we investigate the psychedelic experience induced by Magic Mushrooms and LSD, including data such as the measured concentration of active ingredients, body weight, gender, and prior experience with psychedelics. Previous studies have often not considered such variables, but we want to change that.
Particularly, we want to focus on exploring the so-called entourage effect in psychedelic mushrooms.
What is the Entourage Effect?
The term Entourage Effect was first established by Dr. Ethan Russo and comes primarily from research on the cannabis plant. The hypothesis here is that the combination of various cannabinoids, terpenes, and other metabolites strongly influences the effect of the main active ingredient THC (Russo, 2011).
Why should this now play a role in psilocybin-containing mushrooms?
Significant research by our scientist Dr. Felix Blei found that magic mushrooms contain many other compounds besides tryptamine alkaloids, such as potentially active secondary metabolites like harmane and harmine (Blei et al., 2020). Additionally, there are also several (as yet) undiscovered terpenes in the chemical repertoire of these mushrooms (Scháfer et al., 2023). This is particularly exciting as minor mono- and sesquiterpenes in cannabis seem to modulate the activity of major psychotropic metabolites (Booth et al., 2017).
Different mushroom strains = different effects?
The Entourage Effect could therefore explain the highly variable effects of different psilocybin-containing mushroom species or strains. Anecdotal reports claim that individual mushroom species produce different effects in for example the visual or cognitive domain of the psychedelic experience (Gartz, 1989). Do you feel similarly and can report clear differences between the effects of different species/strains?
To test this idea, we developed a new questionnaire assessing the psychedelic experiences induced by magic mushrooms. This questionnaire is easy to understand, quick to complete, and completely anonymous.
Single agent vs. full-spectrum
The Entourage Effect presents an interesting avenue for future research. Together with recent advancements in clinical research on psilocybin as an alternative treatment for mental health disorders (Daniel & Haberman, 2017; Roseman et al., 2018), some critical questions arise:
Do the (therapeutic) effects of different species of magic mushrooms differ from those of pure psilocybin? Do different strains of magic mushrooms have different therapeutic potential? Will future psychedelic therapy use the whole fungus or isolated psilocybin? If you had the choice, would you, like many medical cannabis patients, prefer a full-spectrum administration over a single agent?
These are the questions we are trying to answer with our community research project!
Be part of our community research
With our Psilocybin QTest, you can test psychedelic mushrooms for their psilocybin/psilocin content for the first time. By reporting the results from your analysis and answering questions about your psychedelic experience, you can be part of our community research project!
We are excited to allow our community to independently advance psychedelic research and science.
Together we can find out how psilocybin contents are distributed across the many mushroom species that occur in nature. Finally, data can show whether different mushroom species or strains produce different experiences. Large-scale follow-up community projects could investigate the effects of various influences such as substrate, genetics or environmental factors.
First Terpenes in shrooms
In a collaboration between the University of Jena and the local HKI and MPI, Eike Schäfer and colleagues were able to show the production of over nine different terpenes, including β-copaene and δ-cadinene in the fruiting bodies of Psilocybe cubensis. You can see which terpenes were also found in the in-vitro product assays of P. cubensis in the graphic.
However, it was not only possible to detect these terpenes, but also how the fungi produce these known natural substances. The enzyme CubA was identified as a multifunctional sesquiterpene synthase. CubA was four-fold upregulated in fruiting bodies vs. vegetative mycelium, which pointed to a function of this gene in the mushrooms.
SOURCES:
Fricke, J., Blei, F., & Hoffmeister, D. (2017). Enzymatic synthesis of psilocybin. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 56(40), 12352–12355. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201705489
Daniel, J., & Haberman, M. (2017). Clinical potential of psilocybin as a treatment for mental health conditions. The Mental Health Clinician, 7(1), 24–28. https://doi.org/10.9740/mhc.2017.01.024
Roseman, L., Nutt, D., & Carhart‐Harris, R. (2018). Quality of acute psychedelic experience predicts therapeutic efficacy of psilocybin for Treatment-Resistant Depression. Frontiers in Pharmacology, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2017.00974
Russo, E. B. (2011). Taming THC: potential cannabis synergy and phytocannabinoid‐terpenoid entourage effects. British Journal of Pharmacology, 163(7), 1344–1364. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1476-5381.2011.01238.x
Booth, J. K., Page, J. E., & Bohlmann, J. (2017). Terpene synthases from Cannabis sativa. PLOS ONE, 12(3), e0173911. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0173911
Gartz J. Analysis of Aeruginascin in Fruit Bodies of the Mushroom Inocybe aeruginascens. International Journal of Crude Drug Research. 1989;27(3):141-4.
Scháfer, E., Seibold, P. S., Bartram, S., Trottmann, F., Haensch, V. G., Gressler, M., Chadeayne, A., Hertweck, C., O’Connor, S. E., & Hoffmeister, D. (2023). A „Magic Mushroom“ Multi‐Product sesquiterpene synthase. ChemBioChem, 24(21). https://doi.org/10.1002/cbic.202300511
Questions about our community research?
Do you have a question about our community research project? Just send us a message and we'll get back to you as soon as possible!