Medicine of hemp

The usual way of creating a medicine is to find a biological target and to search for / select / design an active selective molecule, looking through hundreds and thousands of options. But there is another approach - to take a substance or a group of substances (say from an extract of a plant) and with perseverance to look for him for some activity. The approach is somewhat strange, and often doomed to failure. But we must admit that it, in some places, works ...

The company GW Pharmaceuticals, founded in 1998 by two British doctors Geoffrey Guy and Brian Whittle (hence the name), chose this approach and focused exclusively on extracts from cannabis, in order to withdraw products from this plant to the pharmaceutical market. They received permission from the British authorities to cultivate certain strains of cannabis for scientific research and began fruitful cooperation with Dutch pioneers of marijuana research HortaPharm.

The first success came in 2010. The product GW Pharma-Nabiximols (trade name Sativex), as a spray, has successfully passed clinical trials to alleviate a number of symptoms of multiple sclerosis and has been approved in the UK as well as in several other countries. Nabiximols, in fact, is a mixture of products of marijuana extracts: tetrahydrocannabinol (tetrahydrocannabinol, THC) and cannabidiol (cannabidiol, CBD) in an approximate ratio of 1: 1. In fact, according to the real effectiveness of Nabiximols, there are still many questions and doubts. The latest statistics says that for a number of symptoms the drug is "probably effective" - which, in general, is on the verge of ... The drug did not enter the US market, incidentally, there is evidence that in the US clinical trials were stopped in 2007.

However, it seems that in the coming months another GW Pharma drug, Epidolex, will be released to the US market, which is essentially pure cannabidiol (CBD), derived from marijuana. The drug showed significant effectiveness in cases of epilepsy (with a regular admission, the number of seizures is halved) and with the Drava and Lennox-Gastaut syndromes in children. The mechanism of action of Epidolex is unknown, which, incidentally, did not prevent him from obtaining a "fast track" status from the FDA. Just last week, an advisory committee with the FDA recommended approval of the drug, and such recommendations, as a rule, are not rejected by the regulator. With this news, the company's shares soared by 10%.

In development, GW Pharmaceuticals has a number of cannabinoids isolated from marijuana that are being tested for the treatment of epilepsy, schizophrenia and a number of oncological diseases ...