Establishing antibiotic potential for cannabis

Authored by imb.uq.edu.au and submitted by IMBatUQ
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Synthetic cannabidiol, better known as CBD, has been shown for the first time to kill the bacteria responsible for gonorrhoea, meningitis and legionnaires disease.

The research collaboration between IMB's Centre for Superbug Solutions and Botanix Pharmaceuticals Limited could lead to the first new class of antibiotics for resistant bacteria in 60 years.

Gonorrhoea no longer has a single reliable treatment.

Director of the Centre of Superbug Solutions Associate Professor Mark Blaskovich said CBD - the main nonpsychoactive component of cannabis - can penetrate and kill a wide range of bacteria including Neisseria gonorrhoeae, which causes gonorrhoea.

“This is the first time CBD has been shown to kill some types of Gram-negative bacteria. These bacteria have an extra outer membrane, an additional line of defence that makes it harder for antibiotics to penetrate,” Dr Blaskovich said.

In Australia, gonorrhoea is the second most common sexually transmitted infection and there is no longer a single reliable antibiotic to treat it because the bacteria is particularly good at developing resistance.

The study also showed that CBD was widely effective against a much larger number of Gram-positive bacteria than previously known, including antibiotic-resistant pathogens such as MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) or ‘golden staph’.

Dr Blaskovich said cannabidiol was particularly good at breaking down biofilms—the slimy build-up of bacteria, such as dental plaque on the surface of teeth—which help bacteria such as MRSA survive antibiotic treatments.

Dr Blaskovich’s team at the Centre for Superbug Solutions mimicked a two-week patient treatment in laboratory models to see how fast the bacteria mutated to try to outwit CBD’s killing power.

Cannabidiol has a low tendency to cause resistance in bacteria.

“Cannabidiol showed a low tendency to cause resistance in bacteria even when we sped up potential development by increasing concentrations of the antibiotic during ‘treatment’.”

“We think that cannabidiol kills bacteria by bursting their outer cell membranes, but we don’t know yet exactly how it does that, and need to do further research.

The research team also discovered that chemical analogs - created by slightly changing CBD’s molecular structure—were also active against the bacteria.

“This is particularly exciting because there have been no new molecular classes of antibiotics for Gram-negative infections discovered and approved since the 1960s, and we can now consider designing new analogs of CBD within improved properties.”

Vince Ippolito, the President and Executive Chairman of Botanix, said the research showed vast potential for the development of effective treatments to fight the growing global threat of antibiotic resistance.

“Congratulations to Dr Blaskovich and his team for producing this significant body of research—the published data clearly establishes the potential of synthetic cannabinoids as antimicrobials,” Mr Ippolito said.

“Our Company is now primed to commercialise viable antimicrobial treatments which we hope will reach more patients in the near future. This is a major breakthrough that the world needs now.”

Dr Blaskovich said collaborating with Botanix has sped up the research, with Botanix contributing formulation expertise that has led to the discovery that how cannabidiol is delivered makes a huge difference in its effectiveness at killing bacteria.

The collaboration has enabled Botanix to progress a topical CBD formulation into clinical trials for decolonisation of MRSA before surgery.

“Those Phase 2a clinical results are expected early this year and we hope that this will pave the way forward for treatments for gonorrhoea, meningitis and legionnaires disease.

“Now we have established that cannabidiol is effective against these Gram-negative bacteria, we are looking at its mode of action, improving its activity and finding other similar molecules to open up the way for a new class of antibiotics.”

This research has been published in Communications Biology.

The Institute for Molecular Bioscience is leading the global fight to stop deadly superbugs.

themightyklang on January 19th, 2021 at 15:05 UTC »

The provided link is not a primary peer-reviewed source and the link to a purportedly peer reviewed and published study provided at the end of the summary is dead. The nominal study was also financially supported by a privately held company with a financial interest in development of cbd related pharmaceuticals. I'm not necessarily suggesting that anything is untrue, but I would be interested to see the actual study and particularly what concentrations or CBD were used to exert antimicrobial effects. Anything can kill bacteria if you use it at like 200uM, that doesn't mean that it's a promising antibiotic.

Edit: The link to the peer-reviewed publication (in Nature Comms.) was provided by another commenter shortly after I posted. When I clicked the link in the OP this morning it lead to a DOI not found error, but it works now so Nature must not have published the article when I checked early this am.

Wundei on January 19th, 2021 at 13:51 UTC »

Its annoying that "synthetic cannabidiol" gets the credit instead of CBD isolate which is derived from natural sources and over 99.0% pure CBD.

philman132 on January 19th, 2021 at 12:52 UTC »

There have been very few new antibiotic classes in the last 60 years, true, but not none, so this definitely wouldn't be the first since the 60s at sll. That statement alone makes me assume this is yet another "cannabis cures everything" story that is too good to be true