Georgia Regents University and the state of Georgia have worked for months to land a marijuana-derived drug clinical trial for children with difficult seizure disorders. How the drug actually works to limit seizures is still being worked out.
Gov. Nathan Deal announced last week that GRU and other sites in Georgia would host clinical drug trials for Epidiolex, a drug made by GW Pharmaceuticals of London. The company’s chairman and founder, Dr. Geoffrey W. Guy, visited GRU last week to talk about GW’s research into Epidiolex, which is a purified version of cannabidiol oil.
Cannabidiol, or CBD, is one of about 70 active ingredients that have been isolated from the cannabis sativa plant that the company has specially bred to produce high levels of the plant chemical and to eliminate the other well-known marijuana chemical, tetrahydrocannabinol or THC. That is the psychoactive part of the plant that produces the “high” from smoking marijuana; CBD actually blocks its effects.
Both THC and CBD are anticonvulsants, but THC interferes with
brain development in children, which is why the company worked for 10 years to breed THC out of its plants, Guy said.Where THC appears to activate certain receptors on cells in the brain, CBD blocks those receptors, said Dr. Jimok Kim, an assistant professor in GRU’s Department of Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine.
CBD also seems to avoid the motor and behavioral impairment that accompany many current epilepsy drugs, Guy said.
“That’s why people think CBD is promising because CBD has no psychoactive side effects,” Kim said.
via Marijuana drug at GRU works differently | The Augusta Chronicle.
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