Cannabis for cancer, epilepsy?

Brian Blum

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Hundreds of delegates from all over the world descend on Israel for the annual CannaTech conference, founded to identify and incubate world-class solutions for the cannabis industry.

Some 800 people from 40 countries gathered at CannaTech Israel 2018 to network and learn. Photo by Tal Pais/Photogenim

Can cannabis cure cancer? That’s a question Prof. David “Dedi” Meiri, head of the Laboratory of Cancer Biology and Cannabanoid Research at the Technion-Israeli Institute of Technology, is trying to figure out. The answer so far is a very guarded “maybe.”

Meiri was one of some 70 speakers among the 800 participants at the fourth annual CannaTech conference in Tel Aviv, March 19-20.

CannaTech was founded in 2015 as a platform to enable the identification and incubation of world-class innovative solutions for the cannabis industry. The conference also has taken place in London and is scheduled for Mexico and Australia later this year.

While there was no product for sale in the vast exhibit hall, there was plenty of buzz from companies developing everything from medical inhalers, which deliver medical cannabis the way similar devices dose asthma powders, to specific treatments (at least two companies are working on cannabis alternatives to sleeping pills)

 

Can cannabis cure cancer? That’s a question Prof. David “Dedi” Meiri, head of the Laboratory of Cancer Biology and Cannabanoid Research at the Technion-Israeli Institute of Technology, is trying to figure out. The answer so far is a very guarded “maybe.”

Meiri was one of some 70 speakers among the 800 participants at the fourth annual CannaTech conference in Tel Aviv, March 19-20.

CannaTech was founded in 2015 as a platform to enable the identification and incubation of world-class innovative solutions for the cannabis industry. The conference also has taken place in London and is scheduled for Mexico and Australia later this year.

While there was no product for sale in the vast exhibit hall, there was plenty of buzz from companies developing everything from medical inhalers, which deliver medical cannabis the way similar devices dose asthma powders, to specific treatments (at least two companies are working on cannabis alternatives to sleeping pills).

The IVC Research Center counts 68 companies in Israel active in the medical cannabis field, employing some 900 people. From 2013 to 2017, more than $76 million was invested in Israeli medical cannabis startups.

Many of those companies were on display at CannaTech, held in a trendy nightclub at the Old Tel Aviv Port.

They included well-known names such as Tikun Olam, which grows and supplies medical cannabis to 12,000 Israeli patients a year (some 800 of them children), and up-and-comers such as Kanabo Research, which is developing cannabis oil formulations for use with its VapePod delivery system recently approved by the Israeli Ministry of Health.

At the same time, it was reported in February that the Israeli government halted a plan to authorize the export of medical cannabis, a business valued at more than $1 billion a year.

“It’s a disgrace,” said CannaTech and iCAN Israel CEO Saul Kaye. “The government is missing out on a massive opportunity to become the world leader. This is a mature, robust R&D-focused opportunity that is looking to globalize.”

Saul Kaye, CEO of iCAN and CannaTech, opening the fourth annual CannaTech Israel conference in Tel Aviv. Photo by Tal Pais/Photogenim

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