Legendary cannabis researcher, Professor Raphael Mechoulam, often referred to as the “father” or “godfather” of cannabis research, is set to celebrate his ninetieth birthday on Thursday night at the closing event of the 31st International Cannabis Research Symposium (ICRS).
The 4-day symposium, which Prof. Mechoulam helped found 31 years ago, was held in Jerusalem this year for the first time .
However, the international nature of the symposium’s speakers and guests, mixed with the effects of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, led the organizers to hold it virtually this year, also for the first time.
“Four years ago, as the director of the Multidisciplinary Center for Cannabis Research at the Hebrew University [of Jerusalem], I approached the ICRS board of directors and pitched bringing the conference to Israel for the first time ever,” Prof. Yossi Tam told The Jerusalem Post.
Prof. Tam said the ICRS voted to change its by-laws, specifically to allow the conference to take place in Jerusalem, and that the virtual nature of the conference did not seem to deter scientists from wanting to participate.
“Last year the conference was totally canceled due to COVID-19, so this year the field was very eager to participate. We usually receive only 120-130 abstracts [applicants].This year we received more than 300 to be considered for presentation at this conference.”
In fact, Prof. Tam said that the virtual nature of the conference this year “allowed it to expand the platform and to have 12 oral sessions that feature 74 oral presentations, in addition to 9 plenary lectures and over 200 posters.”
Prof. Tam said one of the most interesting differences in this year’s conference when compared to previous years was the record number of clinical human trials they received as abstracts, which he claimed indicated “a major advancement in the field.”
Prof. Mechoulam’s actual 90th birthday was in November, but the conference organizers decided it was close enough to the actual date to warrant a celebration of Prof. Mechoulam’s lifelong contribution to the field of medical cannabis research.
At Thursday’s closing presentation, Prof. Mechoulam will provide an overview of his nearly six-decades of research into cannabinoids, starting from his team’s discovery of cannabinoids in the early 1960’s, moving through his team’s discovery of the endocannabinoid system in the late 1980s and all the way to his current research on synthesized cannabis acids.
Prof. Mechoulam currently leads the medical team for EPM, which plans to register in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange toward the third or fourth quarters of 2021.
“When you look at a cannabis field, none of the plants actually contain THC or CBD or any cannabinoids. All cannabinoids will appear on a plant only after that plant is dead,” Prof. Mechoulam’s partner and EPM co-founder Reshef Swisa told the Post last March.
“You learn that there is a big difference between the compound you find on a plant when it’s alive and the compound you’ll find when it’s dead,” he said.
Swisa said that while the potency of cannabis acids is higher than its cannabinoid counterparts, “the cannabis acids are very unstable, meaning they break apart into cannabinoids very easily. If you tried to take them from the plant or tried to consume them, the heat of your body would break them down and they would decarboxylate.”
In order to get around these obstacles, Mechoulam’s team synthesized molecules in a lab which replicate the structures of the cannabis acids, but do not easily break up into cannabinoids, allowing them to be reproduced on a large scale without the need to depend on living plants.
“We’ve so far developed 14 different molecules, eight of which are completely novel discoveries, meaning that we own a very exclusive patent on them, since they are a new discovery to the scientific world,” he said. “Each one of those molecules has the potential to be developed into several drugs, while many companies can do incredible things with even just one molecule.”
He said that for pharmaceutical companies to show an interest in investing in a new drug, they need it to be either more potent, cost-effective, or have fewer side effects than the currently approved treatments. “It must be better than what they have now,” he said.
During the conference, Prof. Tam presented a recent study which showed that one CBD-derived acid, EPM01, has shown “impressive results” in battling obesity and metabolic abnormalities in mice.
Another study which showed impressive results on mice using the EMP01 molecule was one done by Prof. Dan Pe’er, who heads the Nano-Medicine Department at Tel Aviv University.
Pe’er’s study found that EPM01 performed at the same level as currently prescribed treatments for inflammatory colon diseases, namely ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, using a smaller dose than needed with steroids.