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GW Pharmaceutical Receives Early Approval On THC CBD Cancer Treatment Patent

Daily Dose 2014-12-17 51 comments

GW Pharmaceutical has received early approval on patent that covers marijuana chemical

Drug maker will soon hold patent on THC CBD treatment. GW Pharmaceuticals announced that it has been issued a Notice of Allowance from the U.S. Patent Office for a patent application involving the use of THC and CBD, the two main chemicals in marijuana, for treating gliomas.

Once a patent application is deemed a genuine invention, the Patent Office sends a Notice of Allowance that outlines the fees involved with final approval.

Description of Patent

The subject patent specifically covers a method for treating glioma in a human using a combination of cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) wherein the cannabinoids are in a ratio of from 1:1 to 1:20 (THC:CBD) with the intent to reduce cell viability, inhibit cell growth or reduce tumor volume.

Filed in 2009, GW’s patent application lists Otsuka Pharmaceutical as a collaborator and initially claimed the invention of the “use of a combination of cannabinoids in the manufacture of a medicament for use in the treatment of cancer.”

However, it’s likely that the application was revised since then to be more specific in its claims, including the ratio of THC to CBD used and the type of cancer treated.

Indeed, the use of cannabis and cannabis-derived chemicals to fight a wide range of cancers has long been suggested by pre-clinical research as well as anecdotal reports.

On the other hand, the first clinical trial to investigate these cancer treatments only began last month, launched by GW Pharmaceuticals for their cannabis drug Sativex.

The trial investigates Sativex in combination with the standard chemotherapy drug temozolomide, and involves 20 patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), an aggressive and rare form of brain cancer.

GW Pharmaceuticals also announced in November that it had begun human trials of a CBD-rich cannabis drug for the treatment of pediatric epilepsy.

51 comments

  1. Doc

    How can someone get a patent on chemicals that are produced naturally on earth? That’s like getting a patent for dirt.

  2. sherry

    I believe that president got changed when Bill Clinton was in office and no one was paying attention because they were all watching the O J Simpson trial. Monsanto patened its seeds. Suposed to be illegal to patent things from nature like food.

  3. Barbara Weaver

    What is the symbol of this company.GW Pharmaceuticals,

  4. karenyoung

    They should not let the Goverment get their hand on it for proffet. They have denide all the health claimes for yrs and just aproves cemical drugs that have made the people sicker–Now when the truth comes out they only want to make money they don’t care about the health of people !!!

  5. benjamin richard carver

    Dope

  6. windy

    Another example of American government doing shady deals… Someone please tell these officials, CEOs, whomever wanting to get on the bandwagon , they can’t patent nature! Profiting on royalties or rights to this patent would be illegal… Any lawyers or judges out there??

  7. Burt

    On October 7, 2003 The United States Government as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services was granted a U.S. Patent (#6630507) on any and all uses and applications of: Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants.

  8. Ali

    Where there’s money to be made…

  9. Raymond

    Nonsense headline. You cannot get a patent on natural chemicals. Learn how to write properly and not sensationalize.

    • Aaron

      It actually happens all the time. What they patent in this case is the treatment specifics as in dosage of CBD and THC. Which then makes any extract product with that dosage legally theirs to sell. Other ways to patent a “natural” product is to patent an processing method, an altered gene sequence, or by trademarking a brand.

  10. Rodger

    How is it possible to patent a plant and/or its properties.?

    • Dorothea

      How much will they charge for this medicine?

    • Mikal

      The patent is for a TREATMENT that uses both cbd and thc along with the standard chemotherapy drug to treat brain tumors… just because mcdonalds has a patent on the big mac doesnt mean they got the patent for cows…

      • who

        chemotherapy is poison ….using cannabis oil alone and diet is all that’s needed to cure cancer

        • Harry

          Kind of a broad statement don’t you think? There are plenty of types of cancer that aren’t very reachable at all to inject oil into.

          • Starsoul

            There is no ‘injection’ of oil involved. It is ingested ie. swallowed orally to then work its magic inside the body and deal with any and all types of cancers.

          • kim bartlet

            it is digested not shot into the body

      • Fred Kapelski

        I think you are engaging in more conceptual thought than they can understand. I mean, if they could get a patent on oxygen, they would start charging us for it. Especially, since it is a naturally occurring substance.

      • Cyndi

        totally wrong. they are mixing this with chemo and calling patent on a plant. ONLY if they design a PARTICULAR PLANT should they be able to develop a patent on it. It is like saying air in the sea is better than mountains air, So we shall put a patent on sea air and charge others who live there to breathe it.

    • Ali

      Where there’s money to made made, a way will be found.

    • Jim

      Ask Monsanto. They seem to have it down even though you are not supposed to be able to patent nature.

    • MikeR

      Patent Office bureaucrats do what they are fracking well told.
      Question is, when not if a patent is issued, who’s going to police
      medical weed consumption without being totally re-creative
      (=lying through back teeth) regarding alleged intentions of
      the medical user’s desired therapeutic outcome of the
      said consumption.
      Merck patented a therapeutically-effective niacin-CoQ10 combination.
      They in effect admitted criminality by shelving the patent to stop any
      competitor marketing such a great product.
      I don’t imagine the miserable Merck’s patent stopped any one ND
      prescribing their patient take Niacin and Co Q10 together, from
      different sources.
      IYCWIM 🙂

    • Ray

      It’s not, their patent is for their proprietary blend of extracts. It doesn’t mean they own CBDs or THCs. It protects them from others who would try to patent something similar as a treatment for brain cancer. With all of that said, I think it’s BS too!! Now that cannabis has come into the mainstream the corporations want to have it all.

      • Cheryl

        Bullshit. These are the same asses that have damned the evil demonic weed swearing the herb has no medicinal properties. No…not until the FDA and Pharmaceutical Companies can make their $$$$ on it. How many lives could have been saved if the lies and Propaganda had never been. Pisses me off to the MAX!!!

        • Chris

          Different bureaucrats. No common supervisor below President.

        • Dalton

          i agree lady, this shit will end soon though so dont worry, ive been teling my family since i was really young that i read cannibus had this worth and i was always ignored. i cant wait til this information hits full blast on all the people ive been telling this to for the last five years. i have noticed they have slowly started figuring out the truth. and today my mom asked me about it. feeling good that i was telling people the truth and my mom huged me today and told me that this world truly has some promlems. finally broke through the ignorance

    • Chris

      United States Patent: 8632825 Anti-tumoural effects of cannabinoid combinations
      Abstract
      The invention relates to the use of a combination of cannabinoids, particularly tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD), in the manufacture of a medicament for use in the treatment of cancer. In particular the cancer to be treated is a brain tumor, more particularly a glioma, more particularly still a glioblastoma multiforme (GBM).

      Claim: A method for treating glioblastoma multiforme in a human in need thereof consisting essentially of administering to said human therapeutically effective amounts of cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in combination as pure cannabinoids wherein the cannabinoids are in a ratio of from 1:1 to 1:20 (THC:CBD).

      United States Patent 8,632,825 Velasco Diez, et al.
      issued: January 21, 2014
      Assignee: GW Pharma Limited (Salisbury, GB)
      Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Limited (Tokyo, JP}

      TABLE-US-00002 TABLE 2 Tumour volume relative to zero time following 15 days of treatment
      Tumour volume
      Vehicle 9.2 .+-. 0.6
      Pure THC 5.1 .+-. 0.4
      THC extract 6.6 .+-. 0.3
      THC:CBD (1:1) extract 4.8 .+-. 0.3

      As can be observed in Table 2 above the tumour volume after treatment with the 1:1 combination of THC and CBD extracts is significantly superior to the treatment with either the pure THC or the THC extract alone.

      This data suggests that the cannabinoids THC and CBD would be more effective in the treatment of tumours when used in combination.

    • Mathew

      They can patent it all they want, as long as we can still get it grown by caretakers they aren’t doing anything drastic. Private manufacturing of the plant and concentrates can be done in a way to manipulate the structure of the THC and CBD making it just different enough from the patent to not be what is patented therefore rendering their patent claims void if they attempt to enforce them, this is futile. Its like saying your going to patent maple syrup but there are 80 kinds of maple syrup and anyone with some botany training cane create their own syrup. This is just so they make money, but this won’t help them as long as the people continue to grow dank nugs from private stock. Every grower knows, even the best strands grow totally different by different growers making it like an entirely different plant.

    • Drake

      The same way they can make a plant illegal.

    • Dave

      While I don’t agree necessarily with them being able to patent a plant, I have two points to make. 1) I think they are getting a patent on the treatment process itself and not the plant, and 2) If they succeed then it shows the cannabis does have medical value and it cannot be a Schedule I drug any longer, which will help ease the process for legalization.

    • elizabeth

      Exactly…how do they get away with patenting a plant???

    • nature

      The US allows for use patents ie Herb x can be used for disease Y. Then no one else other than the patent holder can claim that! There are both positives and negatives to this. Positive is that the patent holder will then pay to prove this. So it will come out of the realm of snake oil and into the realm of medicine. Downside is that one corportation then owns the patent and others cannot claim the same!