CBD Could Lower Chemotherapy Doses

When we discovered this, we KNEW we had to share it on our blog!

This is a huge step forward in cancer patient care, a disease close to our hearts at Blumenes.

According to the latest research, it could soon become legal for doctors to reduce the doses of chemotherapy drugs by using cannabis-derived CBD (cannabidiol).

Developed by a team of researchers in Israel, under the leadership of Professor Alexander Binshtok, this discovery could help cancer patients fight the disease with significantly lower side effects.

The team includes Hebrew University’s scientists Asaf Shilo, Hagit Neumann-Raziel, Shaya Lev, Ben Katz, Maxim Mogilevsky, Yoav D. Shaul, David Shneor, Rotem Karni, Alik Honigman, and Alberto Gabizon, and Germany’s Hannover Medical School’s researcher Andreas Leffler.

It is vital to note that Professor Binshtok is the Pain Plasticity Research Group Head at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

The method created by the team delivers chemo drugs directly to the malignant cells, bypassing the healthy ones in the body.

That means their newly-discovered method could possibly enable doctors worldwide to lower the doses of chemo for cancer patients.

While the method would improve the overall prognoses and treatment compliance, it would also decrease the side effects associated with the therapy significantly.

Prof. Binshtok said that a majority of cancer treatments aren’t adequately specific as they tend to attack even the healthy cells in the patient’s body.

As a result, chemotherapy leads to multiple side effects of a serious nature, often weakening the patient's immune system to the point of avoidable and unnecessary death.

Explaining further, Binshtok stated that targeting and eliminating only the affected cancerous cells and leaving the healthy cells alone in the procedure is a critical step to diminish the suffering of the patients.

Binshtok, along with his team, described how they utilized CBD for activating TRPV2 protein so that a canal inside cancer cell membranes could be opened.

Then, the team inserted a reduced dose of doxorubicin, a chemo drug, through this canal and into the cancer cells directly.

They noted that the “doxorubicin-mediated cell death is significantly more potent, requiring an order of magnitude lower dose, when co-applied with CBD.”

THIS IS HUGE!

The team has described the findings in their journal titled "Frontiers in Pharmacology."

While concluding, the Professor said that although it was very early to arrive at solid predictions, they are hopeful that this discovery would lead the journey towards a more targeted chemo treatment delivery method.

Always remember, we are still at the infancy stage of cannabis-, CBD- and hemp-related research when it comes to healthcare applications.

Over the next few decades, we foresee tremendous strides toward a more holistic integration of cannabis-derived products into modern medicine.

In the meantime, we'll keep you posted right here on our blog about the latest discoveries!