New 3-year medical cannabis research project
Funded by UKRI’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), and in partnership with Glass Pharms and the Advanced Plant Growth Centre at The James Hutton Institute, a new medical cannabis research program will be conducted.
The three-year project will support the growing need for medicinal cannabis, helping to standardize to meet pharmaceutical quality through environment manipulation and the development of new cannabis plant architectures.
Currently cannabis varieties vary greatly creating different cannabinoid profiles. The research in Dundee will aim to use CEA technologies to create a consistent product and help the UK to maintain its position as the world’s largest producer and exporter of medicinal cannabis.
The plants will be grown to maturity at Glass Pharms’ semi-closed glasshouse facility, with advanced sensor technology tracking environmental conditions and plant growth and a robotics-based container system that moves the plants through different climate zones suitable to developmental stages, optimizing consistent growth across multiple harvests.
The research will be led by professor Derek Stewart, director of the Advanced Plant Growth Centre.
“This is an exciting project for the James Hutton Institute team to be involved with. We will play an important role in furthering pharmaceutical quality of these plants, reinforcing the UK’s importance on the world stage,” Stewart said.
“We believe that working with the Advanced Plant Growth Centre on this research project will directly lead to better health outcomes for UK patients. The APGC and Glass Pharms’ advanced cultivation facility is the ideal combination to develop and stabilize cannabis cultivars intended for use in medicine,” said James Duckenfield, CEO of Glass Pharms.
