Although a lot of work that has been done on cannabis, scientists have not identified every cannabinoid, so many research groups are continuing to identify and categorize the chemicals in cannabis. Samir Ross from the University of Mississippi led one such group in the discovery of nine new cannabinoids, and they published the structures and biological activities of these chemicals in an advanced article in the Journal of Natural Products.

The researchers grew plants from high-potency Mexican C. sativa seeds and harvested the whole buds of mature female plants. They performed chemical extraction and purification procedures on the plant material to isolate the nine cannabinoids. … After figuring out the chemical structures, it was crucial to know how useful these molecules might be in terms of medicinal properties. The first good news was that none of the cannabinoids were toxic to cells extracted from African green monkey kidneys, which meant that they have potential as drugs. Upon closer inspection, several of the compounds had respectable biological activities, as well.

Compound 5 had potent antileishmanial activity, which makes it a possible candidate against leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that is spread by the bite of the sandfly. Compound 8 was effective at killing Staphylococcus aureus, a frequent cause of staph infections, and compound 7 had good activity against Candida albicans, a fungus that gives people oral and genital infections. The other cannabinoids weren’t as biologically active, but they all had some drug potential. For insistence, compounds 2 and 6 were mildly affective against MRSA, and compound 1 had some antimalarial activity.

The identification of these biologically relevant cannabinoids will give natural product chemists new ideas for future drugs. Even the less active ones can turn out to be useful, as chemists can make modifications of the structures that are more potent.

via New biologically active compounds from cannabis – Ars Technica.

Oh cannabis, is there anything you can’t do?  Didn’t these guys get the memo from the US government that cannabis has “no recognized medicinal value in the United States”?  Oh, wait, sorry, my bad – that’s only raw natural cannabis that is medically useless.  If you break it down into its cannabinoid compounds, patent it, put it in a pill, mark it up 2,000% – 20,000% for a healthy profit, and require people to go through a doctor and a pharmacist to get it, if they can afford it and their insurance will cover it, then it has “accepted medical use” and is only capable of “moderate to low dependence”.

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Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2008-09-10

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Sheesh, I barely made it!  A Wednesday post with just minutes left in Wednesday out here on the West Coast.  I tells ya, I’s a busy media producer these days, and on top of that I had an urgent database project to complete for the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act (OCTA2010.org).

Somebody call me a wahhhmbulance.

In today’s Audio Stash we examine some more Cannabis Science as Dr. Mitch Earleywine and I review the Italian study showing cannabinoids to be promising new anti-biotic agents to fight drug-resistant superbugs.  (I knew there was a reason I rarely get colds or flu!  Between the THC and the Triple Habanero Pizza, no germ dare live in me!)

Then I’ve got exclusive audio from last weekend’s Portland Hempstalk with NORML Founder Keith Stroup’s keynote address.  It was such a thrill to have “Papa NORML” fly across the continent just to join us at my hometown hempfest.  Don’t let him con you about my lack of driving and navigating skills in my Hyundai trying to find a restaurant to meet Madeline Martinez for dinner… I was just being a gracious host by trying to show Mr. Stroup as many Portland side-streets as possible.

You should also check out last Friday’s episode of Cannabis Common Sense with John Trudell, Keith Stroup, Vivian McPeak, Bill Drake, Jack Herer, Eddy Lepp, Tim Pate and Madeline Martinez, hosted by Paul Stanford.  It was like a Mt. Rushmore of my heroes on TV!

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Observatory – Marijuana Ingredient May Fight Bacteria – NYTimes.com
Marijuana may be something of a wonder drug — though perhaps not in the way you might think.

Researchers in Italy and Britain have found that the main active ingredient in marijuana — tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC — and related compounds show promise as antibacterial agents, particularly against microbial strains that are already resistant to several classes of drugs.

It has been known for decades that Cannabis sativa has antibacterial properties. Experiments in the 1950s tested various marijuana preparations against skin and other infections, but researchers at the time had little understanding of marijuana’s chemical makeup.

Uh-oh.  The mainstream media is saying something positive about marijuana!  And during the same week the Drug Czar released the new National Survey on Drug Use and Health!  John Walters can’t be happy about this.

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Marijuana Ingredients May Fight MRSA
Sept. 4, 2008 — Chemicals in marijuana may be useful in fighting MRSA, a kind of staph bacterium that is resistant to certain antibiotics.

Researchers in Italy and the U.K. tested five major marijuana chemicals called cannabinoids on different strains of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). All five showed germ-killing activity against the MRSA strains in lab tests. Some synthetic cannabinoids also showed germ-killing capability. The scientists note the cannabinoids kill bacteria in a different way than traditional antibiotics, meaning they might be able to bypass bacterial resistance.

At least two of the cannabinoids don’t have mood-altering effects, so there could be a way to use these substances without creating the high of marijuana.

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Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2008-09-03

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Time for some cannabis science!  First up, Dr. Mitch wonders about the latest CASA report that shows the availability of marijuana to teens is greater than ever, even as we arrest more people and send them to treatment than ever before.

Next, Paul Armentano joins us to tell us about an exciting new Italian study showing cannabanoids to be an effective new anti-bacterial agent to fight MRSA and other bugs that have developed resistence to standard anti-biotics.

And me, I’m still recovering from almost finishing two slices of Triple Habanero Pizza from my hometown Boise, Idaho’s Flying Pie Pizza.  Seriously, guys, you win.  That pizza was so hot I felt like the day I completed the tear-gas training in Basic 23 years ago.  Food should not make your face leak from every orifice.

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Antibacterial Cannabinoids from Cannabis sativa: A Structure?Activity StudyMarijuana (Cannabis sativa) has long been known to contain antibacterial cannabinoids, whose potential to address antibiotic resistance has not yet been investigated. All five major cannabinoids (cannabidiol, cannabichromene, cannabigerol, ?9-tetrahydrocannabinol, and cannabinol) showed potent activity against a variety of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains of current clinical relevance.

… [P]reparations from C. sativa were investigated extensively in the 1950s as highly active topical antiseptic agents for the oral cavity and the skin and as antitubercular agents. Unfortunately, most of these investigations were done at a time when the phytochemistry of Cannabis was still in its infancy, and the remarkable antibacterial profile of the plant could not be related to any single, structurally defined and specific constituent.

… There are currently considerable challenges with the treatment of infections caused by strains of clinically relevant bacteria that show multidrug-resistance (MDR), such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and the recently emerged and extremely drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis XDR-TB. New antibacterials are therefore urgently needed, but only one new class of antibacterial has been introduced in the last 30 years.

These considerations, as well as the observation that cross-resistance to microbial and plant antibacterial agents is rare, make C. sativa a potential source of compounds to address antibiotic resistance, one of the most urgent issues in antimicrobial therapy.

This MRSA bug is serious stuff – it kills more people every year than does AIDS!  Now, don’t you think that if researchers had discovered that any other substance but pot was going to be the new cure for the “Superbug”, that it would have been front page news?  Or that if they found pot led to higher rates and deaths from MRSA that it would have been splashed all over the headlines?

Our government’s continued suppression and willful ignorance of the overwhelming and mounting evidence that cannabis has medical efficacy is nothing short of a crime against humanity.  Our government is willing to let its citizens suffer and die rather than relent on marijuana rescheduling.  Our government is putting politics over science (again) so that our elected officials (many of whom smoked weed) won’t “send the wrong message” about pot.

(Listen in to the Stash later today for my interview with NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano on this subject and Congress’s failure to act.)

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