One of the biggest things standing between hundreds of thousands of patients and the medicine they need, according to many, is a lack of research on how to best utilize cannabis as a medicine. Luckily, with medical marijuana laws now in place in over half of the United States – and expansions to federal studies – lack of research will no longer be an issue soon. In Colorado, where cannabis is legal both for medicinal purposes and adult recreational consumption, we have seen a number of researchers, doctors and universities step in recently to try and bring more legitimacy to the world of marijuana as medicine.
The University of Northern Colorado is one such school, and they have partnered with a company called PharmaCyte Biotech, which has a patented technology called Cell-in-a-Box. On top of creating this technology, which is meant to enhance the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs in shrinking malignant tumors – more specifically, for inoperable brain cancer – they have been researching the use of cannabinoids paired with their technology and so far have seen promising results.
“We are looking forward to sharing some of our results with the scientific community,” Hyslop said. “Our team of biochemists, organic chemists, molecular biologists, genetic engineers, undergraduate students, and graduate students continue to work diligently to achieve our goal of developing targeted cannabinoid-based chemotherapy utilizing Cell-in-a-Box.”
Dr. Hyslop, along with his students, has submitted two different proposals in hopes that they will be presenting two different papers at the American Chemical Society National Meeting in San Francisco in April of 2017. If they are chosen to present their findings, then they will be debuting a paper titled “Development of a cannabinoid-based Cell-in-a-Box therapeutic system targeted towards malignant tumors” as well as “In vitro anti-neoplastic activity for specific phytocannabinoids of Cannabis sativa”.
The first is a paper describing how using specific phytocannabinoids and model compounds can convert an inactive cannabinoid to an active one – with the chance to reduce the size of tumors. The second is only a part of a more in-depth study that hopes to use cannabinoid-based targeted treatment of malignant tumors. Both papers, once presented, would be added to the wealth of information being discovered regarding the use of cannabis therapy to treat and possibly even cure the dreaded disease that has taken so many lives.
Having cannabis based research presented at national meetings like this is a big deal – it shows just how far we have come already with marijuana reform and the acceptance of its use in medicine. At this point, well over half of the U.S. (let alone the rest of the world) are convinced of cannabis’ therapeutic value – and we’re finally at the point where we are no longer trying to prove it’s worth, but rather find out how to best make use of it instead.
