New Study Shows Promising Results In Treatment Of Parkinson's Disease With Cannabinoids

Biopharmaceutical research and drug development company, Gb Sciences, Inc. GBLX, co-published a study in the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology that demonstrates the efficacy of its proprietary cannabinoid-containing, minimum essential mixtures for the treatment of Parkinson's disease.

For this Gb Sciences-sponsored study, the discovery research using cell models of Parkinson's disease was performed at Chaminade University, and the MEM refinement and validation research was performed in a zebrafish model of Parkinson's disease at the National Research Council of Canada.

The study titled Identification of minimum essential therapeutic mixtures from Cannabis plant extracts by screening in cell and animal models of Parkinson's disease was co-authored by Gb Sciences' own President and Chief Science Officer Andrea Small-Howard and her collaborators Michael G. Morash, Jessica Nixon, and Lee Ellis from the National Research Council of Canada as well as Lori M.N. Shimoda and Helen Turner from Chaminade University of Honolulu; and Alexander J. Stokes from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

"Our drug discovery process has identified promising ratio-controlled mixtures of cannabis-inspired compounds for the treatment of Parkinson's disease, which have proven effective at reducing Parkinsonian motor symptoms in an animal model of the disease," Howard said. "This study allows us to continue addressing unmet clinical needs through the development of novel plant-inspired drugs, and positions Gb Sciences as a contributor to the expanding world of novel PD therapeutics."

The Metodology

The sequentially reductionist process implemented in this multi-site study preserves some of the entourage-like effects of whole plant extracts while achieving "relative" simplicity within MEM that is a requirement for obtaining the manufacturing and quality control advantages of single-ingredient drugs.

This paper identifies promising minimal essential mixtures of cannabinoids based on a step-wise, strategic approach to reducing the complexity of the plant secondary metabolome. The sequential use of in silico, in vitro, and medium throughput in vivo experimental systems has generated refined, de-risked mixtures that can now be tested in additional, higher-cost, preclinical model system.

Photo: Benzinga Edit, Source: Shutterstock