Trials Archives

Clinical trials are key to advancing medicine, including COVID-19 vaccine

MIAMI – Registered clinical trials reached record levels in the past year, increasing the demand for people willing to participate, and Miami resident Marilyn Strauss Diaz was eager to join a COVID-19 vaccine trial underway at the University of Miami Health System.

“We can’t depend on a lab rat. We have to have human trials for there to be a successful vaccine, so we have to have humans come forward and be a part of trials,” she said.

“Before COVID, we usually would have a couple of hundred clinical trials here going at the same time at the University of Miami that are focused on a lot of different diseases. With COVID, there was a slowdown and now we’re ramping up again and starting a lot of these studies,” said Dr. Olveen Carassquillo, who is part of the research team.

“COVID has the most urgency. That’s a public health crisis so a lot of research is focused on that, but we have a lot of landmark cancer studies going on with different treatment regimens and prevention studies. We also have a lot of cardiovascular disease, a lot of other studies focused on stroke, on preventing dementia,” Carassquillo added.

And South Florida’s diverse population makes it a major focus of research efforts, something Strauss Diaz is proud to be a part of.

“At the end, it will be beneficial to so many,” she said.

To learn more about clinical trials at the University of Miami Health System go to: https://umiamihealth.org/clinical-trials

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China’s Fosun to seek approval for BioNTech’s COVID-19 second vaccine, ends trials on first

SUZHOU, China (Reuters) – BioNTech’s Chinese partner Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group does not plan to run further clinical trials of the German firm’s coronavirus vaccine candidate that has completed early-stage trials in China, an executive said.

Fosun will focus instead on seeking Chinese approval for BioNTech’s other experimental vaccine which is in final-stage human trials in the United States, Fosun’s Chief Medical Officer Hui Aimin told Reuters in an interview.

The vaccine candidate developed by BioNTech and U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc is under real-time regulatory review in Europe and could seek emergency use authorisation in the United States after enough safety data is provided as early as this month.

But the candidate known as BNT162b2 missed an earlier window to be tested in China, as Fosun had rushed into Phase 1 trials of a slightly less satisfactory candidate, BNT162b1, before early trials data overseas showed BNT162b2 is safer.

Hui said he did not regret testing BNT162b1 without waiting for more complete data.

“For ordinary vaccines, it does not matter if you wait for a few days, or a month,” Hui said. “But for (COVID-19 vaccines), how many more people would have died had you waited just for one day?”

Hui said Fosun was applying for a bridge study for BNT162b2, designed to evaluate whether the large trial data gathered overseas could be extrapolated to the populace of China.

A bridge clinical trial is required for pharmaceutical products which are approved abroad but do not have data to show that ethnic differences can affect their efficacy and safety, China’s National Medical Products Administration said.

Hui expected the late-stage candidate could be greenlighted for use in China “around the same time” as the vaccine’s global clearance.

Fosun is licensed to exclusively develop and commercialize COVID-19 vaccine products developed by using BioNTech’s mRNA technology in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. In return it agreed to pay up to $85 million in licensing fees and invest $50 million for a stake in the German firm.

(Reporting by Roxanne Liu in Suzhou and Tony Monroe in Beijing; Editing by Miyoung Kim, Stephen Coates and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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Upadacitinib Effective in Two Phase 3 Trials

Upadacitinib (Rinvoq) appears effective for atopic dermatitis (AD) in adolescents and adults, with no unexpected safety concerns, according to two new duplicate phase 3 trials.

The Measure Up 1 and Measure Up 2 trials, each pitting both 15-mg and 30-mg doses of upadacitinib monotherapy against placebo, demonstrated major improvements in all aspects of AD with the active drug, including skin clearance, itch, and patient-reported quality of life.

The Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitor is currently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and is being investigated for several other inflammatory conditions.

Dr Emma Guttman-Yassky

“These are exciting results in terms of quick onset of response and maintenance of response in the patient population with moderate to severe atopic dermatitis, including adolescents,” said lead investigator Emma Guttman-Yassky, MD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

“I think the dermatological community and patients need an additional drug” for AD, “particularly an oral form,” Guttman-Yassky told Medscape Medical News. “The flexibility of dosing is also particularly important with an oral, because if patients are more severe, we may need the higher dose, and all patients may need a higher dose to get the response in the beginning.”

“Both doses are effective, but the rapidity of response is higher with the higher dose, so there’s a strong rationale for both doses,” she added.

Guttman-Yassky presented her research at the virtual European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (EADV) Congress 2020.

The pair of randomized, double-blinded, multicenter trials included a total of 1683 participants who ranged in age from 12 to 75 years and who had experienced moderate to severe AD for 3 or more years. Between 12% and 15% of trial participants were adolescents.

In both trials, participants were evenly assigned into groups to receive upadacitinib 15 mg, upadacitinib 30 mg, or placebo once daily for 16 weeks. Coprimary endpoints at week 16 included a 75% or greater reduction in score on the Eczema Area and Severity Index (EASI 75) and the proportion of patients who achieved a validated Investigator’s Global Assessment for AD (vIGA-AD) score of 0 or 1 with two or more grades of reduction from baseline.

In both trials, the percentage of patients who achieved either EASI 75 or vIGA-AD 0/1 at week 16 was markedly higher with both doses of upadacitinib compared to placebo (P < .001).

In the upadacitinib 15-mg groups, EASI 75 was recorded in 69.6% in Measure Up 1 and 60.1% in Measure Up 2. Proportions were higher for patients who received upadacitinib 30 mg, reaching 79.7% in Measure Up 1 and 72.9% in Measure Up 2. In the placebo group, EASI 75 was recorded in only 16.3% and 13.3%, respectively.

In the upadacitinib 15-mg group, vIGA-AD 0/1 was achieved in 48.1% in Measure Up 1 and 38.8% in Measure Up 2. The upadacitinib 30-mg group logged 62% and 52, respectively. For patients who received placebo, rates were 8.4% in Measure Up 1 and

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How Parents Feel About Their Kids in COVID-19 Vaccine Trials

Katelyn Evans, 16, has never met Randy Kerr—and there’s no reason she should have. It was 66 years ago that Kerr, then 6, became briefly famous, receiving the first injection of Jonas Salk’s experimental polio vaccine during the massive field trial of hundreds of thousands of children in the spring of 1954. History notes that the vaccine worked, and the children who stepped forward to receive either the actual shot or a placebo were heroically dubbed the Polio Pioneers.

Evans is a pioneer of the modern age, one of an eventual group of 600 children in the 16-to-17 year-old age group (along with 2,000 more between 12 and 15) to volunteer to be part of a Phase 3 trial to test an experimental COVID-19 vaccine made by the multinational pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. The company had already enrolled 42,113 adult volunteers in its Phase 2 and 3 trials, but only recently did the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) give approval to include children. And Evans, a high school junior in Cincinnati, was among the earliest, receiving her first of two injections on Oct. 14, at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.

“She was the youngest one to receive the vaccine at that point in time,” says her mother, Laurie Evans, an elementary school teacher. In the spring, the family saw a news report that Pfizer was looking for volunteers and Evans and both of her children signed up. “Katelyn was the only one who got the call,” Laurie says. “I know from the response we’ve gotten that there are some people out there who don’t think this is the smartest thing for us to have done. But I’m more afraid of COVID than the vaccine.”

With good reason. The 8.8 million Americans who have contracted the disease include about 800,000 children, with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reporting a 13% increase in total pediatric cases in just the first two weeks of October. Children with COVID-19 may typically fare better than adults who catch the virus, but they can still become severely ill: some 3.6% of total U.S. COVID-19 patients who have had to be hospitalized have been children, according to the AAP. That reality makes volunteering for the Pfizer field trial more than an act of public-service heroism; it is also a potential act of preventive medicine.

Certainly, that’s the way Sharat Chandra saw things. Sharat was already part of the Pfizer adult trial and when word first went around that children would soon be included too, he and his wife discussed the possibility of enrolling their 12-year-old son Abhinav, and then posed the question to him.

“I raised it to my son and we felt that it might be a good thing for him because if he got the vaccine, it could protect him from getting the virus himself,” Sharat says. “Because he was attending school in person, we felt that it would be good to minimize his risk for infection, if we can.”

Abhinav Chandra participating in Pfizer’s

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Global Oncolytic Virus Therapy Market 2026 Companies Clinical Trials Insight

Oncolytic Virus Immunotherapy Market Offers US$ 700 Million Opportunity With More Than 125 therapies in Clinical Trials says Kuick Research

DELHI, India, Nov. 02, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — “Global Oncolytic Virus Immunotherapy Market, Dosage, Price & Clinical Trials Outlook 2026” Report Highlights:

Global Oncolytic Virus Immunotherapy Market: US$ 700 Million Opportunity
Global Oncolytic Virus Immunotherapy Clinical Trials: >125 Therapies In Trials
USA Dominates Oncolytic Virus Immunotherapy Clinical Trials: >50 Therapies In Trials
Comprehensive Insight on Clinical & Non Clinical Issues Related to Global Oncolytic Virus Immunotherapy Market Development
Approved Oncolytic Virus Immunotherapy: 2
Global Research Progress & Medical Advancement Insight
Imlygic (Talimogene laherparepvec) & Oncorine: Dosage, Price & Patent insight

Download Report: https://www.kuickresearch.com/report-oncolytic-virus-immunotherapy-market-size-sales-clinical-trials-cancer-oncology-melanoma-report-talimogene-laherparepvec-imlygic–oncorine

Recent breakthrough with respect to oncolytic virus therapy in the oncology pharmaceutical industry has set up remarkable achievements in terms of understanding all the important proposed hallmarks for counteracting cancer mechanism of action. The important clinical management terms related with oncolytic virus therapy is believed to be extracting and abolishing all the disadvantages and limitations that were associated with all the commercially available cancer therapies. Certain challenges that were residing in the oncology pharmaceutical industry is estimated to end once the market associated with oncolytic virus therapy comes into full power in terms of financial and commercial availability.

The wide range applications of oncolytic virus therapy with respect to different types of cancers such as melanoma, prostate cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer and many others is estimated to deliver a very bulk amount of research and development investment for the future progress of the therapy at global level. The estimated future market competition oncolytic virus therapy is intense as the market is associated with some of the leading drug research and development players, high research marketing as well as a monopoly situation in treating different types of cancers. As per the study conducted for the market, it is estimated that in the next few years, the market will surpass USD 700 Million by 2026.

In a short period of time, oncolytic virus therapy has selectively replaced all the other traditional cancer therapies available for the cancer patients as the therapy is adjoined with large number of innovative principles. Several therapeutic agents under oncolytic virus therapy has entered clinical studies and have specifically proven to be safe and efficient for human use. Although the market is few years old but the related research and development sector as well as future research is believed to make the system functional as well as effective for millions of cancer patients who have been suffering very badly from past few years.

With the arrival of oncolytic virus therapy for the cancer patients, all the barriers that were pursed in the oncology pharmaceutical industry have been overcome promisingly as the therapy has entered and been recognized as a mainstream treatment facility for the clinical management of the cancer cells. The long-term future of the market at global level appears to be developing at a rate that is highly advanced as researchers

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Israel begins human trials for coronavirus vaccine

JERUSALEM – Israel began human trials for its own coronavirus vaccine as the Jewish state’s second lockdown comes to a gradual end.

Two volunteers in separate hospitals – one in Tel Aviv and another in Jerusalem – have started the trials. If the two, Segev Harel and Aner Ottolenghi, feel in good health in the next two days, another 80 people will join the first phase of the trial.

According to officials, each volunteer will get either a dose of the vaccine or a placebo and will be sent home, where they will be monitored for three weeks for any possible side effects or whether they develop antibodies.

Harel said he is very proud to be part of such an important national mission and said he is not nervous.

Segev Harel at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv.
(Israeli Defense Ministry)

MODERNA WILL HAVE 20M CORONAVIRUS VACCINES READY BY YEAR’S END

If the first phase is successful, the second phase is scheduled for December and will include nearly 1,000 volunteers. A final phase will be open to 30,000 volunteers and will begin in April 2021.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz visited the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv, where the first vaccine was administered.

Segev Harel meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv.
(Israeli Defense Ministry)

“There is a cause for a measure of cautious optimism today,” Gantz said. “Optimism, because I think excellent work is being done by our top scientists across the board, all of whom are giving their very best, and this is cause for optimism.”

He said it will take time to track and process the data and draw conclusions. He asked for patience.

“I see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Netanyahu said. “I see the vaccines in the state of Israel. In this means or another, a vaccine developed here or abroad we will bring enough vaccines to the Israeli citizens, and we will break free from this pandemic.”

The commercial name of the vaccine is “BriLife.” The first part of the name, “Bri”, refers to the Hebrew word for health, “briut,” the second part, “il” alludes to Israel, and “life” speaks to the importance of the vaccine.

Israeli scientists have begun the first coronavirus vaccine trial.
(Israeli Defense Ministry)

CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE

According to the Israel Institute for Biological Research, large-scale production of the vaccine has been implemented. To date, the institute has produced more than 25,000 vaccine doses.

“The work of all the hidden heroes in the institute and the hospitals has been poured into a little bottle which has the potential to bring a life-saving vaccine to the citizens of the state of Israel,” Dr. Shmuel Yitzhaki, head of the Biology Division at the IIBR told Fox News.

Officials said that, if all goes well, the vaccine could be ready for the general population as early as summer 2021.

CLICK

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Rhythm Pharmaceuticals Announces Publication of Results from Phase 3 Clinical Trials of Setmelanotide in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology

Largest studies in POMC and LEPR deficiency obesities demonstrate that treatment with setmelanotide reduced body weight and hunger

BOSTON, Oct. 30, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq:RYTM), a late-stage biopharmaceutical company aimed at developing and commercializing therapies for the treatment of rare genetic disorders of obesity, announced today that results from two pivotal Phase 3 studies evaluating setmelanotide in proopiomelanocortin (POMC) deficiency obesity and leptin receptor (LEPR) deficiency obesity were published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. As previously reported, data from the studies demonstrate that treatment with setmelanotide, the company’s melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) agonist, led to statistically significant and clinically meaningful reductions of weight and hunger.

“Results from Rhythm’s pivotal Phase 3 studies, which are the largest studies to date in POMC and LEPR deficiency obesities, provide evidence regarding the safety and efficacy of setmelanotide and we believe they validate its potential long-term use as a novel treatment for severe obesity and hyperphagia,” said co-author Peter Kühnen, M.D., Institute for Experimental Pediatric Endocrinology, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. “It is important to recognize the signs of these rare genetic disorders because we may soon have a targeted treatment option available for the first time for obesity disorders caused by impairments of the MC4R pathway.”

Rhythm initially reported positive topline data from the Phase 3 studies in August 2019 and subsequently presented updated data in a late-breaking research forum during the 37^th Annual Meeting of The Obesity Society at ObesityWeek^® 2019.

Eight of 10 participants with POMC deficiency obesity (80%; P<0.0001 compared with historical data) and five of 11 participants with LEPR deficiency obesity (45%; P=0.0001 compared with historical data) achieved at least 10 percent weight loss at approximately one year. The mean percent change in “most hunger” score in participants aged 12 years and older was -27.1 percent (n=7; P=0.0005) in POMC deficiency obesity and -43.7 percent (n=7; P<0.0001) in LEPR deficiency obesity. Consistent with prior clinical experience, setmelanotide was generally well-tolerated in both trials. The most common adverse events were injection site reaction, skin hyperpigmentation, and nausea.

“These results are significant because, as we know from natural history data, individuals living with POMC or LEPR deficiency obesity consistently experience substantial weight gain each year beginning in early childhood, and we would not expect any of these patients to be able to achieve 10 percent weight loss over the course of a year without continued treatment,” said co-author Karine Clément, professor of nutrition at Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital and Sorbonne University in Paris. “These data and the significant unmet need to address the obesity and hyperphagia caused by rare genetic disorders of obesity underscore the importance of testing for genetic variants that may impair MC4R activation and lead to severe obesity.”

In May 2020, Rhythm announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted the company’s New Drug Application (NDA) for setmelanotide for the treatment of POMC deficiency obesity and LEPR deficiency obesity, granted Priority Review of the NDA and assigned a Prescription Drug

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Genprex Unveils New Branding for Upcoming Combination Clinical Trials in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

New branding will support upcoming combination clinical trials, including the Company’s trial combining REQORSA™ immunogene therapy drug with AstraZeneca’s Tagrisso^®, which received FDA Fast Track Designation earlier in 2020

Genprex, Inc. (“Genprex” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ: GNPX), a clinical-stage gene therapy company focused on developing life-changing therapies for patients with cancer and diabetes, today announced the launch of new branding for its upcoming oncology clinical trials combining its lead drug candidate, REQORSA™ (quaratusugene ozeplasmid), with AstraZeneca’s Tagrisso^® (osimertinib), which received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Fast Track Designation earlier this year, and for the combination of REQORSA with Merck’s Keytruda^®(pembrolizumab), for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

These trials will use the trial brand “Acclaim,” which the Company believes evokes its enthusiasm and the hope these trials represent for NSCLC patients and the oncology community. Acclaim-1 will be used to identify the REQORSA and Tagrisso combination clinical trial, and Acclaim-2 will be used to identify the REQORSA and Keytruda combination clinical trial.

“We are enthusiastically preparing for our upcoming clinical trials and are excited to launch the adoption of this branding,” said Rodney Varner, President and Chief Executive Officer of Genprex. “We believe the Acclaim brand communicates our passion for providing hope to NSCLC patients for important new treatment options in the fight against this devastating disease and aligns us with the clinical, medical and patient communities.”

The trial brand was developed in order to encourage early exposure of the Company’s clinical programs to the broad audience that Genprex’s business addresses, including patients, healthcare practitioners, clinical investigators, investors, employees and others. Genprex plans to initiate the Acclaim-1 clinical trial and the Acclaim 2 clinical trial in the first-half of 2021. Acclaim-1 is a Phase 1/2 clinical trial using a combination of REQORSA with Tagrisso in patients with late stage NSCLC with mutated epidermal growth factor receptors (“EGFRs”) whose disease progressed after treatment with Tagrisso. Acclaim-2 is a Phase 1/2 clinical trial using a combination of REQORSA with Keytruda in NSCLC patients who are low expressors (1 to 49%) of the protein, programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1).

About Genprex, Inc.

Genprex, Inc. is a clinical-stage gene therapy company focused on developing potentially life-changing therapies for patients with cancer and diabetes. Genprex’s technologies are designed to administer disease-fighting genes to provide new therapies for large patient populations with cancer and diabetes who currently have limited treatment options. Genprex works with world-class institutions and collaborators to develop drug candidates to further its pipeline of gene therapies in order to provide novel treatment approaches. The Company’s lead product candidate, REQORSA™ (quaratusugene ozeplasmid), is being evaluated as a treatment for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). REQORSA has a multimodal mechanism of action that has been shown to interrupt cell signaling pathways that cause replication and proliferation of cancer cells; re-establish pathways for apoptosis, or programmed cell death, in cancer cells; and modulate the immune response against cancer cells. REQORSA has also

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Address Medical Mistrust to Recruit Minorities to COVID-19 Trials

To end HIV and control COVID-19, medicine must earn back the trust of people in Black, Latinx, and Native American communities, said Jonathan Mermin, MD, MPH, director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention at the CDC.

During the closing plenary of the United States Conference on HIV/AIDS October 21, Mermin laid out four principles behind those actions to the audience of USCHA:

Actively work with communities most affected by health inequities
Make plans to address them transparent
Work with community members on those plans and listen to their feedback
Do a good job

“Trust will come with proof of action,” he told the audience, watching virtually from their homes and offices.

But clinicians can take action in the exam room and during clinical trial recruitment to help the process along, said Russell Campbell, MA, deputy director of the Office of HIV/AIDS Network Coordination at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington.

“Distrust in the medical and research establishment has deep roots,” he said during a presentation earlier in the week. To address this, clinicians must learn “culturally appropriate and meaningful engagement to influence the participation of historically underrepresented communities in healthcare and research.”

From Slavery to HeLa to Clinical Practice

Medical mistrust doesn’t stem only from the denial of treatment to the men who were part of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. It also includes reckonings with the racist abuse of study participants by some of science’s most acclaimed leaders. Take, for instance, J. Marion Sims, MD, the so-called father of gynecology, who gained much of that information by experimenting without anesthesia on enslaved women; or Cornelius Rhoads, MD, whose name was removed from an award at the American Association for Cancer Research when objections grew concerning racist remarks Rhoads made about Puerto Rican patients in the 1930s. Or consider the story of Henrietta Lacks, the originator of the HeLa genes that have guided oncology research. Her genetic material was being mined for oncological insights without her permission and without compensation.

“The groups that have been systematically and intentionally denied treatment and known cures for diseases on behalf of research have just really taken the brunt,” Campbell said during a session role-playing best practices for addressing medical mistrust among potential clinical trial participants, conducted earlier in the conference.

“African Americans, American Indians, Puerto Ricans, Guatemalans, and others really still are heavily impacted by these abuses of research.”

And it shows in clinical outcomes. Research into HIV antiretroviral treatment adherence has found that medical mistrust was associated with a 76% likelihood that Black Americans living with HIV would be nonadherent to their treatments. But race-based medical mistrust drew into question the necessity of treatment at all.

A 2016 study in the journal AIDS Care found that although White gay men in Boston and primarily Black gay men in Jackson, Mississippi both reported concerns about side effects and lack of culturally appropriate care, it was the Black gay men in Jackson who expressed stronger medical mistrust

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CHNC Aims to be the Global Leader in Cannabis Clinical Trials Through a Merger with Pharmacology University

HOUSTON, Texas, Oct. 28, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — via NewMediaWire — CHNC announces its merger with Pharmacology University, Inc., a global leader in the field of medical cannabis education that markets its services under the brand Pharmacology University. More to the point, CHNC joining forces with Pharmacology University Inc. and Precision Research Institute has created one of the most complete companies in the cannabis industry. COO Elizabeth Hernandez explains the reasons behind the decision: “While pursuing my dream, I had wanted to unite forces with a company in the Cannabis Industry and that is when I found Pharmacology University. The synergy between the two companies has been superb and we are positioning ourselves to become the high-end authority of the Cannabis Research Industry. Now this journey finally feels complete. Riding this new wave of inspiration, we are deeply committed to produce revenue generating models and building shareholder value.”

The merger of CHNC, which is publicly traded on OTC markets under the ticker symbol CHNC, provides the framework for Pharmacology University to expand its focus into cannabis clinical trials and bolstering its education offerings.

Founded in 2010, Pharmacology University offers educational products and consulting services in the United States, Puerto Rico, Latin and South America; to train doctors, dispensary owners, growers, lawyers, and other professionals on the palliative and myriad health benefits of cannabis. The company also has partnered with private accredited universities to offer an intensive master’s certification program in cannabis science and is now the top international provider of medical cannabis education.

In addition to its classroom education, Pharmacology University owns and operates Canna Law Magazine, which is a digital informational piece that provides cultural enrichment to the cannabis entrepreneur. The magazine has biweekly editions and informs the public about the most recent legal cases in the cannabis industry worldwide, also providing strategies by which its readers can avoid finding themselves in legal situations for lack of knowledge. Canna Law Magazine is currently available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Arabic, and it is being developed to be published in Chinese and Hindi. To view the magazine, visit www.cannalawmagazine.com.

“We want to be pioneers in the search for the truth with actual clinical trials, in regards to how cannabis can be utilized,” says Pharmacology University In-House Legal Counsel, Anne Graham. “Predominantly because the number one problem for people that are set against using cannabis as medicine is simply due to the fact that the cannabis industry has not produced sufficient medical studies,” she says.

The global market for medical cannabis (also known as medical marijuana), is expected to reach more than $150 billion annually by 2027, according to a 2019 report by ResearchAndMarkets.com. The anticipated growth is driven in large part by the legalization of cannabis for medical use in Europe, as well as the passage in the U.S. of the Hemp Farming Act of 2018, which legalized hemp, a variety of the Cannabis Sativa species that has less than 0.3% concentration of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). And