Canopy Growth Corp. recently completed one of the first major CBD studies on the lifelong effects of CBD use and found that it prolongs life and increases activity in old age – well, in worms.
While the results were promising, using organisms with a lifespan of two weeks shows just how hard the industry is working to meet the demand for hard science, which has passed the consumer hype. After all, CBD is already used by millions of people around the world for conditions such as insomnia and anxiety, and there is little in humans research done towards long-term safety or even its effectiveness.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said last week that the compound's different effects on men and women will affect its regulation, but has yet to say how. For now, companies like Canopy need to fill the research gap, which could ultimately help the FDA decide how to regulate it.
More extensive CBD research by Canopy Growth Inc.
Canopy's study, which is due out this week, found no signs of toxic effects from CBD, even when used throughout the worms' life. The short-lived animals are often used in early-stage testing in the pharmaceutical industry to screen for toxic effects when working with new compounds.
Using the worm models, researchers found that CBD "did not exhibit any degree of acute or lifelong toxicity or related liability at physiological concentrations."
None of the 3.504 C. Elegans worms in the Canopy CBD study died prematurely compared to a control group, even at significantly increased doses - a good sign for the safety of CBD, said Hunter Land, a senior director of science at Canopy. In fact, at doses similar to human consumption, CBD extended the life of the little roundworms by 18%, and they showed an increase in activity of 206%.
“As they got older, they moved more like young animals,” Land, who designed the study, explains in a telephone interview. “Instead of seeing something toxic, we see the opposite: it actually increases health parameters.
The worm models were selected because C. elegans share 60 to 80 percent of their genes with humans and have a lifespan of only a few weeks.
The study is part of a series that Canopy is working on to evaluate CBD. It already sells products such as gummies and tinctures. The company also has a partnership with beer maker Constellation Brands and is moving to CBD drinks.
“These results serve as the only data on lifetime CBD exposure in an in vivo model to date, and the absence of long-term toxicity gives us the evidence that we need as an industry to continue to investigate the potential health benefits for wider use of CBD, ”Hunter Land, a senior director at Canopy Growth, said in a statement.
The study, which will be published in the journal Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, was in partnership with NemaLife Inc., a Texas-based biotech company.
“These results are the only data on lifetime CBD exposure in an in vivo model to date,” the study concludes. "Although further CBD research into the lifelong use of CBD should be conducted in mammalian models, the C. elegans model indicates a lack of long-term toxicity at physiologically relevant concentrations," it adds.
Earlier this year, Israeli researchers used a zebrafish model to reportedly identify different cannabis cultivars and rank them according to therapeutic potential. According to researchers, zebrafish have a similar brain structure to humans, albeit much simpler.
A 2018 study published in the journal Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry, showed that zebrafish are an “excellent model organism” for studying the endocannabinoid and opioid systems.
Sources ao Bloomberg (EN), Muggle Head (EN), TheGrowthOp (EN),
