Abstract
In recent years, there has been a growing appreciation by regulatory authorities that cannabis-based medicines can play a useful role in disease therapy. Although often conflagrated by proponents of recreational use, the legislative rescheduling of cannabis-derived compounds, such as cannabidiol (CBD), has been associated with the steady increase in the pursuit of use of medicinal cannabis. One key driver in this interest has been the scientific demonstration of efficacy and safety of CBD in randomised, placebo-controlled clinical trials in children and young adults with difficult-to-treat epilepsies, which has encouraged increasing numbers of human trials of CBD for other indications and in other populations. The introduction of CBD as the medicine Epidiolex in the United States (in 2018) and as Epidyolex in the European Union (in 2019) as the first cannabis-derived therapeutic for the treatment of seizures was underpinned by preclinical research performed at the University of Reading. This work was awarded the British Pharmacological Society Sir James Black Award for Contributions to Drug Discovery 2019 and is discussed in the following review article.
Highlights
We initially showed that THCV had actions analogous to CB1 receptor antagonists on inhibitory neurotransmission at interneuron-Purkinje cell synapses (Ma, Weston, Whalley, & Stephens, 2008)
We further demonstrated that the anticonvulsant effects of CBDV-rich cannabis extracts occurred independently of actions at CB1 receptors (Hill et al, 2013)
There are ongoing investigations into the potential clinical utility of CBDV in epilepsy; overall preclinical data in in vivo seizure models generated at the University of Reading strongly suggested CBD as a prominent cannabinoid which had clear potential to address the unmet clinical need associated with different forms of epilepsy
Summary
The introduction of CBD as the medicine Epidiolex in the United States (in 2018) and as Epidyolex in the European Union (in 2019) as the first cannabis-derived therapeutic for the treatment of seizures was underpinned by preclinical research performed at the University of Reading.
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