Colorado State University’s (CSU) Cannabinoid Research Center (CRC) has been operating for a full year, with its work so far largely focused on identifying and quantifying various cannabinoids, laying the foundation to support clinical studies.

CSU received a $1.5 million donation in early 2020 from an alumna who wanted to create a research center dedicated to studying the chemical compounds in hemp. The CRC was born and now operates in collaboration with Panacea Life Sciences, a Colorado-based cannabinoid research and certified GMP manufacturing company.

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The CRC aims to solve industry-wide issues and gain a better understanding of how cannabinoids work in the body. In the past year, researchers have discovered how to remove common contaminants from hemp products and purify cannabinoids that are present  in low concentrations in the hemp plant, as well as created the foundation for future clinical studies.

“You see people who say such-and-such a cannabinoid has this effect, and then there’s no data,” CRC Director Melissa Reynolds says. “You don’t know how much, you don’t know which cannabinoid [and] you don’t know which applications. So, that’s what we’re really working on, is getting the science right.”

Panacea Life Sciences Chief Science Officer James Baumgartner says the CRC’s overall mission is to deliver reliable information about cannabinoids to scientists, physicians, veterinarians and consumers.

“We want the center to actually serve as the foundation to support clinical studies, both within animals as well as within humans,” Baumgartner says. “That’s going to be a really important aspect moving forward.”

Baumgartner and Reynolds welcome other researchers to collaborate with the center to help drive the science forward in the CRC’s second year of operation.

A Year of Accomplishments

The first order of business for the research center was developing methods to separate out various cannabinoids to determine which cannabinoids—and how much of each—the researchers had at their disposal.

“We have very reproducible protocols that we can do that over a range of cannabinoids,” Reynolds says. “That measurement science, the notion that we can accurately know what we have and how much we have, was an important aspect of really laying the groundwork for the center.”

Reynolds and her team have also been working on measuring the bioavailability of the cannabinoids by measuring blood and saliva samples.

The past year of work at the CRC has also allowed researchers to detect various pesticides and separate them from hemp samples.

“The pesticide research is extraordinarily important,” Baumgartner says. “Hemp is a notoriously difficult plant from the standpoint of it absorbs everything that’s in the soil. So, if you have a hemp farmer that’s next to a corn farmer and the corn farmer crop dusts with a pesticide on their crop, it’s going to drift over and … the hemp will absorb everything that comes into contact with it.”

Remediating these contaminated crops using the methods developed by the CRC will ultimately save hemp farmers from destroying their crops, Baumgartner says.

“Having a safe method to remediate those contaminated hemp oils is extremely important to the industry,” he says.

While many of the CRC’s clinical trials are yet to come, researchers have launched an irritable bowel syndrome study with a collaborator in New York, as well as a study that will take place within CSU on how cannabinoids impact Alzheimer's disease.

Reynolds and Baumgartner are in the process of launching six total studies in the coming year with the hope of eventually gleaning some results on how cannabinoids affect different disease states.

“It’s really important to understand, what is the dosage that these [cannabinoids] need to be at in order to affect a medical condition?” Baumgartner says. “[The Cannabinoid Research Center is] a platform to be able to support clinical studies that will allow us to better understand how cannabinoids, terpenes and other compounds of the plant actually contribute towards novel medications or novel supplements for health and well-being."