In The LAB
Nature Identical
48
Cannabis has been consumed for centuries by smoking. This route of administration requires no processing beyond drying the live plants. Unfortunately, smoking marijuana does not achieve many of the most sought-after characteristics patients and consumers request in cannabis products. These characteristics include products that are discrete, predictable, consistent, and with targeted efficacies. To develop products like sublingual drops or transdermal patches that do not create the smell of combusted marijuana, and can target pain, insomnia, or anxiety in predictable and consistent ways, cannabis must be processed for incorporation into a formula.
Understanding the need for processing cannabis and the benefit of doing so in a nature identical way, the focus shifts to understanding what molecules should be extracted and how to extract them. Literature provides us with a great starting point for the types of phytochemicals present in cannabis including cannabinoids, terpenes, and phenolic compounds [1], [5]. The best way to understand the characteristic compounds in various cultivars of cannabis is through extensive analytical testing [3], [4].
Once the types of compounds present in a particular cultivar of cannabis are elucidated one can exploit different chemical properties such as solubility, boiling point, and polarity to target and extract those compounds as gently as possible. Unfortunately, many of the common extraction methods in the cannabis industry such as butane or ethanol extraction do not give the processor many options in tuning the extraction process for targeting specific classes of molecules.