As illustrated by the Spring 2016 Marijuana Business Conference & Expo earlier this month, the numbers and momentum of cannabis in the U.S. are undeniable. As revenues continue to climb into the billions, more research and development push the sector forward. According to the newly-released 4th Edition State of Legal Marijuana Markets Report from from ArcView Market Research and New Frontier, a cannabis-focused data-analysis firm, much of the increase in sector is attributed to adult use market sales, which hit $1.3 billion last year alone. By 2020, adult use and medical marijuana sales are expected to reach nearly $23 billion.
Insys Therapeutics, Inc. announced that it has successfully completed its Phase 1/Phase 2 safety and pharmacokinetic (PK) study in pediatric subjects with treatment-resistant epilepsy. In this trial, 61 subjects with refractory epilepsy, between the ages of 1 year to 17 years, received treatment with Insys’ pharmaceutical cannabidiol (CBD) oral solution across multiple investigative sites in the United States. The clinical trial evaluated multiple ascending doses of Insys’ CBD with three cohorts of subjects receiving total daily doses of 10 mg/kg, 20 mg/kg or 40 mg/kg. Over 80% of these subjects continue to receive CBD in an ongoing long-term safety study.
Based on a CBS News poll conducted in April 2015, 84 percent of those surveyed wanted to see marijuana legalized for medicinal use nationwide. It’s not hard to understand why, either, with companies like GW Pharmaceuticals showcasing the many uses of cannabinoids in early- and mid-stage clinical trials. For instance, GW Pharmaceuticals’ Epidiolex helped reduced seizure frequency by more than 50 percent in two midstage studies for childhood-onset epilepsy in Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome.
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Filed Under: Drug Discovery