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.
In a 2018 British Journal of Pharmacology study, Mechoulam and his co-authors wrote that their synthetic compound, cannabidiolic acid (CBDA) methyl ester (HU-580) could be more effective than existing CBD remedies, making it “a potential medicine for treating some nausea and anxiety disorders.” Those initial clinical tests found the acids have yielded results on par, and even exceeding, existing treatments, without the side effects.
The naturally occurring but unstable CBD acid (CBDA) is a thousand times more potent than CBD in binding to a particular serotonin receptor thought to be responsible for alleviating nausea and anxiety.
“It’s an interesting molecule that potentially doesn’t have side effects,” said Dan Peer, managing director of the Center for Translational Medicine and head of the Cancer Biology Research Center at Tel Aviv University.
