The drug Cesamet (nabilone), a derivative of tetrahydrocannabinol, was “re-approved” for the clinical market this week for use in treating the side-effects of cancer chemotherapy, including nausea and vomiting. Genetic Engineering News reports that Valeant Pharmaceuticals International (NYSE:VRX) announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given marketing approval for Cesamet (CII) (nabilone) oral capsules. The drug interacts with the CB1 cannabinoid receptor found throughout the nervous system, its interaction with this receptor calms nausea and stifles the vomiting reflex something that many chemo patients would welcome.
What is particularly intriguing though is that this drug made a brief appearance on the pharma market in the 1980s before being pulled. Why? You may well ask. Perhaps attitudes to marijuana were less liberal than today leading ethical committees to feel that derivatives of their active ingredient are acceptable whereas during 1980s they were not. Or, perhaps it is simply that other anti-emetics on the market were at the time more successful with most patients and did not have the negative connotations of illicit drug use associated with them. Now, more than twenty years later those anti-emetics are off-patent and only making generics manufacturers a profit. The time was thus ripe for a new drug to take their place. I could be wrong, Cesamet’s patent was approved on Boxing Day 1985 so it too may have only a short shelf life.
Any Sciencebase readers with insider info on this are welcome to add a comment to this post.
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