Cannabis research pioneer hopes latest discovery is not overlooked — again
Decades after Raphael Mechoulam linked CBD with treating epilepsy, his latest finding may help develop new drugs for psoriasis, arthritis and anxiety. Raphael Mechoulam explaining steps of the process at his Hebrew University lab in Israel.Daniel Fine / EPM Sept. 26, 2019, 6:44 AM HST By Noah Smith Raphael Mechoulam, an Israeli organic chemist and professor of medicinal chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, remembers the letdown after his groundbreaking discoveries surrounding the structure of the cannabis compounds CBD and THC in 1963 and 1964, followed by clinical tests with CBD published in 1980. “Not much happened,” Mechoulam said, noting that it would take more than 30 years before his clinical work on using CBD, or cannabidiol, to treat epilepsy became widely accepted. Greenwich...