A professor at Michigan State University has partnered with pharmaceutical company GB Sciences to help develop a cannabis-based drug that could potentially help treat COVID-19.
According to Chief Science Officer of SB Sciences Dr. Andrea Small-Howard, the new treatment that is being developed could be beneficial to those suffering from a myriad of COVID-19 symptoms. “What it does is help people breathe easier and get people back to normal, and one thing that’s super important is getting these people off the ventilators and out of the hospitals,” she told WILX 10.
Two of the main issues that doctors are looking at when treating COVID is how to deal with the severe inflammation and immune system attack caused by the virus. These are the things that can make the virus deadly, as the lungs can stop working properly. So far, these researchers have found that certain components from cannabis could help reduce this inflammation. “When your immune system doesn’t quite know how to process something that’s attacking your body, it throws everything at it that can lead to problems, like acute respiratory distress syndrome, which is one of the leading causes of death in COVID-19 patients,” Small-Howard said.
Currently, these studies are only in the pre-clinical trial phase, but the researchers hope to soon be able to move to the next phase of making this medicine a reality. It could take up to a year and a half to get the medicine out, a long time in COVID-19 years, but not so long in scientific terms.
“We are now testing them using human white blood cells to see how effective they are alone as well in various combinations,” Kaminski said.
“We are in the process of making sure we are making a therapeutic that is safe, and then the next step is getting in the hands of the patients,” Small-Howard added.
