Healthy living
investing in studies, and trials to show that CBD can help people with anxiety, it can help them with sleep, because there’s anecdotal evidence for that. But there’s no data.”
CBD molecules can be manipulated during the extraction process to work in a large variety of products.
got that coming through the system. And that opens up the cannabis market in a way which has never happened before,” Moore says. “You’re looking at a multi-billion-pound market, because you haven’t so far seen any real sophistication in new product development with CBD.”
While still relatively infantile as far as data and testing is concerned, Moore describes cannabinoids as substances with “enormous potential”. He envisages CBD developing in a similar vein to omega-3s, with products becoming more personalised and sophisticated to suit individual tastes.
“There weren’t enough resources to remove CBD products, so they [...] went back to basics and decided to consider it as a dietary supplement.”
Steven Moore 2018 Gov UK 78
The year cannabis was legalised in the UK for treatment of childhood epilepsies and multiple sclerosis.
For Laura Williamson, member manager at ACI, the complexity of CBD is its greatest asset. “[CBD] has a lot of versatility within the body,” Williamson says, outlining the myriad places where our biologically engineered cannabinoid receptors reside. “It also has versatility as a molecule because it can be manipulated to work in a huge variety of products.” With more than six million people in the UK estimated to have already tried CBD, of whom 1.3 million are regular users, it only stands that growing consumer markets can produce more data on the potential benefits of these substances. “I think there are so many people that can benefit from CBD,” Williamson says. “So [it’s important] to make sure that these people have access to safe products, but also building the evidence that these products are going to work. “It’s something that I would really like to see the industry move towards:
Building a case For Sodergren, data is key. Speaking of the Medical Cannabis Research Group, and the Sapphire Clinics enterprise, he refers to current research efforts as a mission to “build that evidence base” partly through the UK Medical Cannabis Registry. Of around 4000 patients that have attended a Sapphire Clinic, around 65% have been treated for pain, 20% for psychiatric conditions such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder. So far findings have been positive. In May 2021, results were released on the clinics’ first 129 patients which demonstrated significant improvements in anxiety, pain and sleep-quality measurements after one and three months. In the context of pain relief, the treatments appeared to be better tolerated than conventional opioids. Another study, released in October, involving 110 patients showed that cannabis oils seem to help alleviate chronic pain, improving pain relief, sleep quality and thus general wellbeing. While some have criticised the UK Medical Cannabis Registry for its open-ended approach, which showcases patient data covering a range of cannabis substances and use cases, Sodergren is more than aware that more precise analysis is needed. “There’s [still] lots and lots of work to be done,” Sodergren admits. “A lot of patients get the whole plant extract. And we know that this mixture seems to work, but it’s a bit crude, saying a mixture of 140 cannabinoids and 120 terpenes seems to have an effect, actually, at some point, we’ll get to a stage where we know exactly what it is that’s having the desired effect, we’ll be able to take those compounds and give them to patients in the desired quantities.” Despite the ongoing battle for funding and the challenge of collating data on a plethora of substances that are still relatively enigmatic – in clinical terms at least – Sodergren is upbeat about the potential medicinal cannabis has to unearth novel forms of therapies and treatments that can make a real difference to patient care. “As these medicines become more mainstream, I think that the basic science research is going to be more appealing,” he concludes. “We’re going to see more and more basic science research groups pop up, that will feed into this cycle. That’s great, because then you can form academic industry partnerships to really fast forward these kind of drug development processes and, in the end, get more medicines to people free on the NHS.” ●
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