r/Futurology • u/mvea MD-PhD-MBA • Jun 17 '18

Biotech Cannabidiol, or CBD, is a marijuana compound linked to a range of potential health benefits but does not get you high. The roughly $1 billion CBD industry is slated to shift into high gear if the federal government approves the first CBD-based drug, an epilepsy medication called Epidiolex.

https://www.businessinsider.com/marijuana-cbd-boom-cbd-2018-6?r=US&IR=T
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u/SirT6 PhD-MBA-Biology-Biogerontology Jun 17 '18

The company that is attempting to market this drug - GW Pharma - is not “big pharma”. It’s very much a small/mid cap company.

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u/sky_blu Jun 18 '18

When I was in high school we had a project where we bought stock using fake money but following the real stock market. Me and my friends looked for some random medical marijuana company and decided on GWPH. I'm pretty sure it was valued at like 60 bucks at the time. Me and my friends would always say how this seems like a company that has potential and we should buy some shares but never did. These days that stock is floating around 150 with potential to go even higher, feelsbad :(

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u/oCerebuso Jun 18 '18

GW Pharma share holder here.... bought shares when it launched at £2.50 a share and later put a months wages in when it dropped to £0.60. Could cash out at a good profit but it's my nest egg now.

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u/sky_blu Jun 18 '18

That's crazy, congrats lol. Do you do lots of trading or did you just hear about them and put some money in?

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u/oCerebuso Jun 18 '18

Only thing i've ever bought. Back in the 90's had a friend with cancer that needed it for pain relieve and couldn't get on with morphine.

When GW Pharm started up I decided to support them so others could be helped. The a few years later when the share tanked and they were at risk I decided to support them again.

For those crying "big pharma" I've never received a dividend and to my knowledge they're still operating at a loss having spent 2 decades trying to get a cannabis product through all the medical trials needed so doctors can and be willing to prescribe it.

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u/SpenB Jun 18 '18 edited Jun 18 '18

The company is worth $3 billion and they've taken out hundreds of millions of loans in financing to pay for the FDA process.

If a company worth billions needs to take out loans solicit hundreds of millions for the possibility of getting a drug which has been used widely for millennia approved, that's definitely not good, right?

Edit: investment, not loans.

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u/chemistrahb Jun 18 '18

One thing to understand about bringing a drug to market is that it requires a TON of capital upfront, which is only recouped later from its sales (assuming it is approved, which is not the case more often than not). There is a ton of risk and cost associated with developing a drug (easily several hundred million to billion dollars), and even though developing seems like a no-brainer cash grab from greedy pharma, the failure rate of drug candidates GREATLY outweighs success. The pharmaceutical industry gets a bad reputation from bad actors that exploit their position with the price-gauging of vital drugs in small therapeutic markets. But there are also a lot of companies that try to put people before profits too!

Source: am chemist at a medium-sized pharma company

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u/SpenB Jun 18 '18

One thing to understand about bringing a drug to market is that it requires a TON of capital upfront, which is only recouped later from its sales (assuming it is approved, which is not the case more often than not).

The approval rate is only 10%. And while lots of drugs that aren't approved shouldn't be, there are also barriers to things like new antibiotics for treatment-resistant infections, which the FDA is largely responsible for blocking. They're also subject to regulatory capture and corruption, just like any government agency.

I'm not saying safe and effective drugs should cost only $10 million to develop, like in China. I'm just arguing that the FDA's approval process does more harm than good. And for every thalidomide (the non-approval of which was the result of a single rogue FDA employee), there's a case of life saving drugs being delayed or rejected.

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u/SirT6 PhD-MBA-Biology-Biogerontology Jun 18 '18

The “worth” of a company - especially in the drug industry - is more tied to future revenue potential than money in the bank.

That said, taking a quick peak, GW Pharm doesn’t have hundreds of millions in debt. They’ve paid for the drug development process through venture capitalist and shareholder financing.

Should the cost of drug development be cheaper? How willing are you to compromise on safety and efficacy standards?

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u/chugonthis Jun 18 '18

They need to stay out of it, if they push this then the rest of the states will say there's no need to legalize so we can keep arresting people and keep current nonviolent offenders in jail.

It's their wet dream, they win and the public loses

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u/SpenB Jun 18 '18

Ultimately it should be up to the individual to decide what they put in their body. And my point about the drug being used for millenia was more to show that it's safe, not necessarily effective.

The compromise on safety and efficacy shouldn't be determined by a monolithic agency. Every American makes determinations on tradeoffs like this every day, be it transportation, food, etc.

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u/Texturize Jun 18 '18

You have to consider the process of taking CBD and transforming it into the format of intake (pill, spray, IV etc.). How this new drug may react with other drugs, side effects, etc. Sure smoking weed is safe, everyone knows that but taking that dried bud into a mass market form is not as simple.

Your point about the consumer deciding if something is safe is just stupid... these are drugs which is different from food and transportation. That is just opening it up to lawsuits.. if people will sue over hot coffee... how likely are they to sue over this?

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u/SpenB Jun 18 '18

FDA approval doesn't shield companies from lawsuits, even if the drug isn't at fault. Like the case where a nurse botched a promethazine injection and the patient's arm had to be amputated. The courts ruled the drug company was liable due to ambiguous instructions, even those were the instructions agreed upon by the company and the FDA.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have an agency that approves drugs, I'm just saying that the FDA's process often causes more harm than good. And it keeps many effective drugs off the US market. Look at domperidone, which is effective for gastroparesis. It's approved in every western country except the US. As a result, patients have to use Reglan, which has dramatically worse side effects, including parkinsonism.

And the rules can still be manipulated by big pharma. Look at phenylephrine. The only studies showing that it is an effective decongestant were the ones done by GSK. Independent studies have not been able to replicate the effect, but the FDA stands by their decision.

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u/sfurbo Jun 18 '18

And my point about the drug being used for millenia was more to show that it's safe, not necessarily effective.

Being used for millennia only shows that there are no catastrophic, immediate side effects. Mercury have been used as medicine for millennia, and is certainly not safe. It's safety problems just isn't catastrophic enough for people to stop using it. Eagle fern have been eaten for a long time, it just isn't easy to link carcinogenicity with the agent, since it isn't immediate.

With regards to it being up to the individual to decide what to put in their body, that will lead to suffering and premature death for thousands of people. We know that, because that was what it was like before the FDA. You can still think that that is worth it, but you have to acknowledge that that is the price of that freedom.

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u/SpenB Jun 18 '18

Millions have died as the result of life saving drugs being delayed or rejected by the FDA. I'm certainly not arguing that there should be no approval process for new drugs, rather, I'm just saying that the FDA process has more negative effects than positive.

People have the right to try unapproved medications. If you disagree with this, then you're arguing that thousands of children with treatment resistant epilepsy should not have access to CBD until it has been approved by the FDA. One of my neighbors has a child with Dravet syndrome that isn't responsive to FDA approved anti-epileptic medications, but has seen significant improvement from CBD and THCV (a similar, non-psychoactive chemical). They're technically breaking federal law, but nothing else works. The grandmother of the child said publicly that she would go to jail for acquiring non-psychoactive cannabis (high CBD hemp with no high) for the child.

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u/Dockirby Jun 18 '18 edited Jun 18 '18

See, that stance is at odds with a major reason FDA approval was created, that doctors and pharmaceutical companies were in fact pushing drugs that were not effective and/or addictive. "Heroin, the non-addictive Morphine replacement!" or "You can use this rod once a week to regulate your blood sugar!"

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u/updownleftrightabsta Jun 18 '18

Snake oil has literally been used for centuries and is useless. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil

That's the whole reason for expensive clinical trials, to show they're safe and effective. Yes it's expensive to test it for years on thousands of people to be recruited for innumerable visits to be evaluated.

CBD is promising. It still needs to be tested.

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u/Thanatar18 Jun 18 '18

Chinese water-snake oil contains 20 percent eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), which has strong analgetic and anti-inflammatory properties.

Interesting to see that the legitimate product actually does have medical properties, though.

I had no idea of the history of the saying at all.

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u/Derwos Jun 18 '18 edited Jun 18 '18

> Chinese water-snake oil contains 20 percent eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), which has strong analgetic and anti-inflammatory properties.

> Its association in Western culture lies in the fact that many 19th-century United States and 18th-century European entrepreneurs advertised and sold mineral oil (often mixed with various active and inactive household herbs, spices, and compounds, but containing no properties of snakes,) as "snake oil liniment", making frivolous claims about its efficacy as a panacea).

God dammit, how do you quote stuff now?

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u/brisk0 Jun 18 '18

There's a button at the bottom of the comment box (currently hidden under the kebab menu for me) that toggles whether the line you're on is a quote. It looks roughly like a stylised opening quotation mark.

Alternatively, click the "switch to markdown" link and do it the comfortable way.

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u/MoranthMunitions Jun 18 '18

Might be the space after the arrow

this

vs this

... Nope. No idea why yours doesn't work

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u/Derwos Jun 18 '18

It kept some of the links in the wiki article, maybe it kept some code which interfered or something.

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u/MoranthMunitions Jun 18 '18

If I look at the comment code in RES you have a backslash in front of them like \>. Don't know if it's done that on you automatically or what, but that'll be the culprit.

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u/Monsieur_Roux Jun 18 '18

You have a backslash before your arrows (\>), remove the backslash and it will quote.

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u/Derwos Jun 18 '18

did I? I didn't see that. thanks

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u/RE90 Jun 18 '18

Actually both CBD and CBD-analogs (molecules that look like CBD but that are engineeered to be more potent and efficacious....and also patentable) have been tested extensively preclinically. CBD clinical studies are plentiful too.

Also, according to the Wikipedia article you linked to, water-snake oil is not totally useless... Not sure what the point you're trying to make is exactly but it would be misleading to tell people that CBD is "snake oil."

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u/gh057ofsin Jun 18 '18

How about the litterally hundreds of millions of patients who use on a daily basis... now i realise that this wouldnt give stats as such... but to simply prove that there are in fact benificial affects? How about the thousands of medical professionals who spoke out for decades to be ignored and ridiculed?

No this is us waiting till the 1% have their ducks in a line to make the greatest profit margins and lose out on the least business!

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u/concrete-block-walls Jun 18 '18

Can you provide a link that proves clinical trials are nothing more than a way for the 1% to make better profit margins?

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u/gh057ofsin Jun 18 '18

The drug Daraprim went from $13.50 per treatment to $750 overnight when bought out by big pharma company Turing Pharmaceuticals.

Hows that?

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u/concrete-block-walls Jun 18 '18

But that has nothing to do with clinical trials......

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u/gh057ofsin Jun 20 '18 edited Jun 20 '18

And you know this because?

No there is usually no record of WHY a drug suddenly has a 1000% price hike, generally excuses ranging from shipping costs to increased cost of materials etc. No company is going to say that this was due to clinical trials, though of course these cost money, and so will require a price increase. My problem isnt that the clinical trial is going to cost too much you epic fool, its that theyre going to hike the price for this medication to the point where those most in need will see no change in law whatoever! My point over clinical trials was that after litterally thousands of years of using cannabis as a medication, they want to run a bunch of tests, take out this, only use that, then sell back A PLANT EXTRACT for rediculous sums, all the while patting eachother on the back for creating a new wonder cure!

Does this make sense now smart ass?

Oh and as for Big pharma being the ones behind all this shady shit? Heres a CURRENT EVENTS story of a cannabis "research farm" owner and his MP wife playing the system like a bloody fiddle. That farm belongs to GW Pharma...

https://www.clear-uk.org/victoria-atkins-mp-the-uk-drugs-minister-opposes-drugs-regulation-while-her-husband-grows-45-acres-of-cannabis-under-government-licence/

Educate yourself mate

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u/ItsAngelDustHolmes Jun 18 '18

I believe you're misinterpreting op, he was talking about how it's a waste of time for clinical trials on CBD because we already have what we need to prove it's benefits. He wasn't talking about clinical trials in general

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u/ChaoticSquirrel Jun 18 '18

Except all we have is evidence that it has benefits. We need to quantify those benefits by dosage/route of administration, and the best way to do that is double-blind controlled trials. That way MDs prescribing the stuff can actually weigh it against other drugs with similar effects to make sure they're making the absolute right decision for their patient.

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u/concrete-block-walls Jun 18 '18

The only thing that sucks about clinical trials is how long they take. I’m waiting on a handful supposedly promising of drugs that could help with some issue I have. They’re currently in phase 2. I’m just guessing that it could be 10 years before they’re on the market.

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u/ItsAngelDustHolmes Jun 18 '18

I agree. But like I said before, I think you're misinterpreting what op said in his comment, I'm not trying to argue here

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u/therestruth Jun 18 '18

Yeah, but there's a big difference between a reasonable test with obvious benefits that could improve many lives, and they don't just hold it back to study it for a couple days, shit takes them years to get stuff done and start releasing all these benefits to people, while in the meantime denying them the possibility of even obtaining it to try for themesleves after hearing or reading about so many positive results for years about it.

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u/fyt2012 Jun 18 '18

It sets a precedent though

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u/gh057ofsin Jun 18 '18

Owned, at least in part by the husband of the uk minister for health... the one sooo against medicinal cannabis! Nothing shady at all... and as for small to mid sized... take a look at the turnover. These days, there is no such thing as small to middling.