Researchers have announced that they’ve successfully identified a new cannabinoid—cannabielsoxa—produced by the marijuana plant as well as a number of other compounds “reported for the first time from the flowers of C. sativa.”
The team of government and university researchers out of South Korea also evaluated 11 compounds in cannabis for antitumor effects in neuroblastoma cells, finding that seven “revealed strong inhibitory activity.”
Authors said the findings represent “an initial step toward developing a product for the treatment of neuroblastoma,” a cancer they note “is the most common solid tumor in children and the most frequent malignancy in the first year of life.”
Published this month in the journal Pharmaceuticals, the paper says researchers used chromatographic techniques to isolate the compounds. They then examined their molecular structures and used a metabolic testing method to assess their toxicity to neuroblastoma cells.
“This study successfully isolated a new cannabinoid and six known cannabinoid compounds, along with a new chlorin-type compound and three additional chlorine-type compounds,” the study says, “which were reported for the first time from the flowers of C. sativa.”
Two of the compounds identified for the first time in cannabis—132-hydroxypheophorbide b ethyl ester and ligulariaphytin A—are described as “chlorin-type compounds.”
They, along with five other known cannabinoids—cannabidiol (CBD), cannabidiolic acid (CBDA), cannabidiolic acid methyl ester (CBDA-ME), delta-8 THC and cannabichromene (CBG)—”could be considered as the potential compounds for antitumor effects against neuroblastomas,” researchers found.
Results of the antitumor analyses “demonstrated that cannabinoid compounds had stronger inhibitory effects on neuroblastoma cells than chlorin-type compounds,” the paper notes.
The new cannbinoid, cannabielsoxa, was not among the compounds that researchers identified as potentially toxic to neuroblastoma cells, however.
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