Olivia Newton-John Is Using Cannabis Oil to Treat Her Cancer
By Lucy Huang on June 9, 2017
Olivia Newton-John announced in May that
she has once again been diagnosed with
metastatic breast cancer. In the early 1990s,
the singer and actress entered remission after
successful chemotherapy, but unfortunately,
the cancer has now spread to the base of her
spine. Newton-John’s family has hinted that
she will be using a new, potentially
revolutionary weapon in her battle against
cancer: cannabis oil, a cannabis plant extract
that contains its active compounds,
cannabinoids. Either used as a spray or
inhaled as a vapor, cannabis oil has shown
potential as a cancer cell killer — and has the
advantage of not actually getting the patient
high.
But does it actually work? The science is
promising, but it isn’t there yet.
In May, Newton-John’s daughter Chloe Rose
Lattanzi suggested in an Instagram post that
they were aware of the existing research on
cannabis oil. “My mom and best friend is
going to be fine,” Lattanzi wrote. “She will be
using medicine that I often talk about. CBD
oil! (Cannabis has scientifically proven
properties to inhibit cancer cell growth) and
other natural healing remedies plus modern
medicine to beat this.” Here, Lattanzi may be
overstating what researchers know about
cannabis oil’s effectiveness — the science is
promising but is in its infancy — but she does
hint at an important point: Recent studies have
found that cannabinoids may be most useful
in the fight against cancer when paired with
existing anti-cancer drugs.
Scientists have long suspected that
cannabinoids
may
have
anti-cancer
properties, but they are only now beginning to
understand the details. In the 1970s, scientists
discovered that cannabinoids have some anti-
cancer effects on certain lung tumors and two
types of leukemia. Subsequent preclinical
studies on cannabinoids have found that the
chemical compounds may block cancer cell
growth and have anti-tumour effects on liver
and breast cancer. But according to a recent
statement from the National Cancer Institute,
“cannabis and cannabinoids may have
benefits in treating the symptoms of cancer or
the side effects of cancer therapies” but there
is still “not enough evidence to recommend
that patients inhale or ingest cannabis as a
treatment for cancer-related symptoms.”
The molecule structure of a CBG-type
cannabinoid.
Building on the research started in the 1970s,
a team of scientists at the University of
London reported in the International Journal
of Oncology in May that pairing two
cannabinoids — tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)
and cannabidiol (CBD) — with chemotherapy
drugs can successfully kill leukemia cells.
While they learned that application of only
CBD and THC to cancer cells could
successfully kill them, their more important
discovery was that the cannabinoids were
especially effective when paired with
chemotherapy drugs. When they applied an
initial dose of the anti-leukemia drugs
cytarabine and vincristine to cells and then
applied CBD and THC, the treatment was
even more effective than when cannabinoids
or chemotherapy drugs were used alone.
Interestingly, the treatment was only
successful in that order — the results didn’t
emerge when cannabinoids were used before
chemotherapy.