Sequencing of the entire genomes of the cannabis species Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica, equating to some 131 billion base pairs of genetic data have been published this week. This data will supposedly lead to innovations that will accelerate ongoing and new research into the therapeutic benefit of Cannabis, help identify nonpsychoactive therapeutic compounds made by the plant and elucidate biochemical and enzyme pathways that could make Cannabis derived compounds easier to produce.
For starters, GW Pharm, one of the most well-recognized names in cannabinoid therapeutics research has produced an oromucosal cannabinoid spray the has been approved in countries including the U.K., Canada, New Zealand, and Spain as an add-on treatment for improving the symptoms of spasticity in multiple sclerosis patients who have not responded adequately to other antispasticity medications. Over the last few months the drug has also been approved and/or launched in the Czech Republic, Germany, and Denmark.
In April Novartis paid GW Pharm $5 million up front and could make another $28.75 million in milestone payments as part of an exclusive licensing deal for commercialization of Sativex in Australia, New Zealand, Asia (excluding Japan, China, and Hong Kong), Africa, and the Middle East (excluding Israel and Palestine). GW Pharm had previously licensed the drug to Otsuka Pharmaceutical for the U.S., Almirall for Europe (excluding the U.K.), Bayer HealthCare in the U.K. and Canada, and Neopharm in Israel and Palestine.
In the meantime, Phase III trials in patients with cancer pain are ongoing along with earlier-stage clinical trials evaluating cannabinoid medicines for indications including neropathic pain, diabetes, and metabolic syndromes, as well as inflammation. Preclinical development in fields spanning cancer therapy, epilepsy, and psychiatric disorders is also in progress.
GW Pharm says it has developed an extensive international network of scientists in relevant fields and in 2007 expanded its early cannabinoid research through a global research agreement with Otsuka. The partners are working primarily on cannabinoids as potential treatments for CNS disorders and oncology, which complements GW Pharm’s in-house program in type 2 diabetes and related metabolic disorders. As part of this in-house program, GW Pharm established the GW Metabolic Research Laboratory at the University of Buckingham in 2009.
The sequencing was not easy however. It was originally carried out using a short-read next-generation sequencing technology. However, the results demonstrated that this approach wasn’t going to provide a clear enough picture of the genome to identify important biological pathways. It became apparent that the different Cannabis strains can demonstrate a genomic variation as high as 1%, so the project was carried out using Roche’s GS FLX+ instrumentation, which enabled the researchers to obtain a roughly 18x genome coverage with the 700 to 800 bp long reads.
Kevin McKernan, founder and head of scientific operations for Medicinal Genomics, the company that released the genetic results explained:
“This realization caused somewhat of a paradigm shift in the way we approached this project. At this point we moved to triple backcrossed cultivars and longer read technology. With the long reads we can sort out the variation in the strain and phase alleles so that we can make biological sense of the sequencing data. We can assemble some key synthase genes into much longer phased blocks, allowing us to focus more on the biology and less on the computational concerns.”
Read the code for yourself HERE.
Written by Sy Kraft