We have completed a lot of the proposed work related to the effects of CBD on cell death and autophagy and the upregulation of the MAP kinase pathway which appears to be involved, however the main mechanism of apoptosis has not been elucidated which may just be directly related to the autophagy induction.
This is a global response in all of the cell lines and has real implication for us to look at other G protein signaling which is not within the scope of this project. The other area that we were in the middle of investigating is the induction of mitochondrial toxicity before the COVID epidemic hit. Once we are back up and running in the laboratory, we will be looking into mitochondrial insult using some standard assays including DHR free radical damage and mitochondrial permeability testing. This will complete the project and we are hoping it will lead to a further publication. That said, we have completed the other aspect of the project related to doxorubicin co-treatment and have also done vincristine co- treatment showing some synergy between vincristine and CBD in the cell culture system which is part of the publication below.
Unfortunately, the COVID pandemic has lasted longer than expected and we have not been able to initiate any laboratory work until recently. This laboratory has just been approved as of September 15th and we are doing experiments to fulfill reviewer comments regarding the paper submitted and are about to initiate the mitochondrial toxicity assays.
Mid-Year-2 Research Update Dr. Wakshlag for effects of CBD use with chemotherapy patients.
