A tall figure looms over the foyer of the Thad Cochrane Research Center on a rainy day in Oxford. Larry Walker is a physically imposing man who seems to fill the halls as he makes his way through the labyrinth of the Center on his way to his office. The office is not big. A desk littered with papers and boxes and a bookshelf strewn with scientific literature fills the small space.
Walker apologizes for the size of the space and says he doesn’t come to campus often. He lives near Jackson, Tennessee, and he attends college only when he needs to. Walker also jokes about the length of his UM career.
But this office does not measure his impact on the university. Walker was director of the National Center for Natural Products Research for 15 years, and prior to that he was a research faculty member in the field of pharmacology for 20 years. As Director of NCNPR, Walker oversaw all natural product research, including cannabis research projects. UM He was the only federally licensed marijuana grower in the United States for nearly 50 years. This readily available supply of products has made UM a world leader in cannabis research.
“There are probably about 120 cannabinoids (chemicals that produce cannabis’ signature effects), and probably 50 have been discovered in the last 15 years,” Walker said. “He did a lot to understand plants and their chemistry, 75% of which were found here in Olemis.”
To give you an overview of how new cannabinoid discoveries are, the structures of THC and CBD were first identified in 1964. Cannabidiol has been shown to reduce pain and inflammation, but it does not get you high and is non-addictive. According to Walker, these discoveries were fairly recent, while he was studying for his Ph.D. In pharmacology, its structure was not even included in textbooks.
Walker addresses the question of why opiates and other narcotics are not Schedule I when marijuana is federally designated as Schedule I.
“I don’t think the market incentives[for THC]are as high as for opiates, so there’s not a very wide demand. ) was far ahead,” he said.
So how did the cannabis research program end up in Mississippi? I checked if it is possible to obtain A proposal was drafted and UM won a bid to grow cannabis for a federal research project that was subsequently initiated.
A few years later, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, classifying cannabis as a Schedule I drug and labeling cannabis as having no legitimate medical uses and a high potential for abuse. Decades later, medical marijuana use has been legalized in 37 states, but remains illegal at the federal level. Mississippi will pass a medical marijuana law in 2022, which Walker generally approves.
“This is a very good program in terms of the manufacturer’s requirements for labeling and purity testing. You can do that,” said Walker.
Now, Walker is calling for a more collaborative effort involving growers, distributors, state and local researchers to optimize the benefits of medical cannabis programs.
“What we really need is a very robust clinical research program that actually incorporates what we already know to exist and what we already believe to be of benefit… and) we really need to understand how different people metabolize it. How it interacts with other drugs – (we need to answer) so many of these All questions of
Ongoing cannabis research at UM focuses on continuing to understand the production and structure of cannabis constituents, testing specific cannabinoids in laboratory models to treat specific conditions, and testing medical cannabis strains in real patients. There are three categories of clinical research programs aimed at understanding doses and doses.
The University of Mississippi Medical Center recently conducted a clinical trial of a drug with CBD as the active ingredient. An oral solution was created by his NCNPR scientist for use in these trials. Epidiolex is a similar FDA-approved drug used to treat seizures. It is the only cannabis-derived drug approved by the FDA for use in patients as young as her one-year-old, and will significantly improve the health and quality of life of those suffering from childhood epilepsy.
Since Walker retired from NCNPR, Ikhlas Khan has been appointed as the new director. Under Khan’s administration, the cannabis research program continues to thrive, but Walker said NCNPR is more than just marijuana.
“There is no other country like this. …There are so many plants that we are working with, but for me it is more exciting than cannabis. …This is all part of our natural world. (We can’t synthesize medicine) That’s how nature has done it, in terms of providing all of this diversity that we’ve never touched. ”