The Trip Report

#2: Dr. Manish Agrawal - Building Clinical Infrastructure for Psychedelic Medicine

Aug 3, 2023

47:05

Today I am speaking with Dr. Manish Agrawal.

Manish is the founder and CEO of Sunstone Therapies and co-director of clinical research at Aquilino Cancer Center in Rockville, Maryland.

Manish studied engineering at Auburn University and graduated from the University of Alabama School of Medicine. He did his medical residency at Georgetown University, where he also earned a master’s in Philosophy. After Georgetown, he did a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health.

He then went on to a more than 20-year career as an oncologist.

In 2017, Manish met Roland Griffiths from Johns Hopkins University, and his interest in psychedelic research was piqued, which led to the founding of Sunstone Therapies.

Sunstone serves as an independent research site that carries out clinical trials for psychedelic drug developers like MAPS, Usona, and Compass Pathways, as well as their own investigator-initiated trials. They also train therapists.

In this episode, we discuss:

* Manish’s career as an oncologist and researcher;

* His time at the National Institutes of Health (NIH);

* The role his philosophy training has played in his life as a physician;

* The origin story of Sunstone Therapies;

* The similarities between delivering cancer treatment and the delivering psychedelic medicine; and

* Preparing for FDA approval.

Listen to the episode on Substack, Spotify, Google, or Apple.

Credits:

* Hosted by Zach Haigney

* Produced by Zach Haigney, Erin Greenhouse, and Katelin Jabbari

* Find us at thetripreport.com