MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies)

MAPS is a nonprofit research and educational organization founded in 1986. It became the best-known institutional home for the modern MDMA-assisted therapy movement and sponsored the research program that eventually fed the Lykos Therapeutics FDA application.

MDMA/PTSD program context

MAPS's public PTSD materials still frame MDMA-assisted therapy as investigational rather than approved, and they remain one of the clearest official summaries of how the program was built. The group's Phase 3 materials describe MAPP1 and MAPP2 as randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multi-site studies designed to test MDMA-assisted therapy in severe PTSD.

That matters because MAPS is still the easiest place to understand the program's nonprofit origins, its clinical framing, and how advocates in the field explain the therapeutic model to the public.

Current role after the Lykos separation

Once the commercialization track moved into Lykos Therapeutics, MAPS stopped being the approval applicant, but it did not stop mattering. The organization remains central to public education, policy engagement, and therapist-training context around MDMA-assisted therapy, which makes it an important trust layer in the reporting record even after the FDA rejection.