Australia's Nobel Laureates III State of Our Innovation Nation 2021 and Beyond

DISRUPTING HEALTHCARE:INTEGRATION OF MEDICINALCANNABIS

Professor Ian Brighthope built an integrative medicine empire, and has now created a global cannabis company, pushing to be at the forefront of the Australian export market.

Medicinal cannabis is on a stratospheric rise globally. For most Western nations, legalisation is now a question of when, and not if. In Australia, the ACT has already decriminalised the growing, possession, and recreational use of the plant.

Considering Australia’s ideal climate and skilled agricultural workforce to grow cannabis, there is a massive market opportunity that awaits domestically, and as an export product.

For Prof. Ian Brighthope, the founder of Nutrition Care Pharmaceuticals, Biocentres Clinics and the post-graduate Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental

Medicine, the real opportunity lies in cannabis as a complementary medicine. A local industry could tap into massive Asian market, which has a huge appetite for herbal remedies.

Few in the complementary and nutritional medicine space have the credentials of Ian Brighthope. Nutrition Care was the first Australian exporter of health care products to China, and also exports to Indonesia, Thailand, Poland, Singapore, Malaysia and New Zealand.

Having sold the company to Chinese investors, though staying on the board, Dr. Brighthope has moved on to his next endeavour: Entoura, a medicinal cannabis company.

Ancient cannabis, modern morality Medicinal cannabis has a long history, particularly in ancient China. The Chinese word for cannabis, Ma, is the oldest known word for the hemp plant in human language. It was used freely as a herbal remedy and anaesthetic, while some historians have claimed that it was also used for its mind-altering and spiritual properties.

Similar stories and findings have been unearthed across the ancient histories of Greece, Egypt, India, and the Netherlands.

While there had been scattered prohibitions of the plant throughout the past 500 years of human history, it was not until the US crusade against the plant in 1937, banning it in an attempt to demonise the recent influx of Mexican immigrants, that the tide truly turned.

The Mexican people used the plant culturally to relax, and while Americans were often prescribed cannabis tinctures from their pharmacists, the word ‘marihuana’, as the Mexican people called it, was foreign to them.

When the ban was ruled unconstitutional, US President Richard "War on Drugs" Nixon made it illegal under the Controlled Substances Act, putting it in the most restrictive category, Schedule I. This was supposed to be a placeholder while a specifically convened panel made a recommendation.

When the Shafer Commission delivered its verdict, that cannabis should be decriminalised, the Nixon administration ignored it.

Now, the US is finally moving back in the other direction, with 47 states having made the plant legal for medicinal purposes, 11 legalising it for recreational purposes, 15 others decriminalising it. As a result, the US is in a significantly advantageous position to export both plants and medicines around the world, whereas Australian companies face massive legal and logistical challenges.

As Dr. Brighthope explains, “If the Government wants Australia to be the biggest and best in this space, we are 20 years behind the rest of the world and remain severely obstucted by government.”

Making a mark Dr. Brighthope’s new company, Entoura, is set to leverage his long history and connections in the region to break into the market, with Nutrition Care Pharmaceuticals having been selling medicines to China for decades.

Combined with Brighthope’s knowledge and passion for nutritional and integrative medicine, the company is set to take a highly-focused approach to the plant. While approving products for pharmaceutical use is an extremely long, expensive process, selling herbal remedies is much simpler.

By incorporating the best parts of the scientific method, while removing the rigidity of drug development, Entoura aims to get products and services to market faster, while constantly researching and improving it.

As Dr. Brighthope explains, “Medicinal cannabis will positively affect many industries, the health of humanity, and the planet. It is a potential sink for carbon, as a rapidly growing crop that can be used to produce bricks, roads and many other materials that are stronger and less combustible than plastics. The products are Generally Regarded as Environmentally Friendly (GRAF).

“Cannabis is far safer than opioids, paracetamol, aspirin, and is a safer anti-inflammatory than cortisone. It is also not addictive.

“There is a very wide range of medications

being replaced by cannabis. In Canada there are good records for the reduction in the use of alcohol, tobacco, and many pharmaceuticals.

“It is a real disrupter, especially in areas such as chronic degenerative disorders, where medicine is a failure.

“I have seen a lot of change in healthcare practices over 40+ years as a healthcare professional. I am hopeful that younger generations can adopt some of the positive changes occuring in terms of nutrition, exercise, and looking after themselves and the planet.”

Cannabis is a complicated plant, with over 400 compounds. The most well known are THC, for its psychoactive effects, and CBD, for its anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving effects.

Dr. Brighthope says Entoura will be looking at every aspect: from the genetics of the seed, to the genetics of the patient, and the patient’s disease.

“This means examining their specific cancer cells, which can have many different

individual genotypes. Quantum computers will be required to look at the relationship of the cancer genes, their microenvironment and the epigenetic influence of the expression of the genes of the plant. This is truly highly personalised medicine.

“Natural therapists, and traditional Chinese practitioners have been doing this for eons. We want to take into account the energetic effects of the plant’s components, including all the cannabinoids, terpenes, soil composition and light … everything involved.”

Cannabinoids provide most of the health benefits, but terpenes and flavonoids help enhance those therapeutic effects, as well as providing individual health benefits. Terpenes have been shown to have analgesic or anti-inflammatory effects, while flavonoids also benefit the immune system.

Entoura says the total composition of the cannabis plant is also responsible for what has been called the "entourage" effect, whereby the individual components work together to enhance and multiply their respective benefits.

From Brighthope’s perspective, “We do not need to reinvent the wheel. Pharmacologists will extract single molecules and expect them to do the same as a complex medicine with multiple molecules. This doesn’t work well. We need to apply the best clinical science of herbal medicine.

“We cannot wait for decades until the researchers prove everything we may ideally want to know about the plant. There is an abundance of high quality evidence to support the safe and effective use of medicinal cannabis now. We cannot leave people to suffer and die prematurely when millions around the world are using it.

“It is one of the safest herbal medicines, and something which doesn’t cause addiction, violent behaviour or death.”

As an integrative medicine practitioner, Brighthope believes that diet, exercise, and looking after yourself are equally important as medicinal products when treating patients.

In his words, “Complementary medicine doesn’t mean very much to me – ‘complementary’ comes from the word ‘complete’, and if you don’t complete your treatments with a patient then you’re practising in a negligent fashion. ‘Integrative’ means integrating all healthcare practices and medical practices

that are proven, safe, effective, inexpensive and ethical. And that means using not only Western medicine and the usual medications, but also incorporating nutritional medicine, scientifically-based herbal medicine, physical medicine and physiotherapy, chiropractic therapy and acupuncture, amongst other modalities.

“We incorporated all of this into our practice, and the best word to describe it was ‘integrative’. I had a business called BioCenters Integrative Medicine, and when the College of Nutritional Medicine had issues with regulators, we set up the Australasian Integrative Medicine Association (AIMA) in the mid 1990’s. Subsequent to the formation of AIMA, the term ‘integrative medicine’ went global.

“Germany has been writing on the importance of exercise for cancer patients in years: shorter hospital stays, better blood results, and improvement with patients’ wellbeing.

“This has been known since ancient times; if someone was sick they were given certain exercises to do. There is nothing new under the stars, but researchers are now ‘discovering’ these things all the time. It is confirming what has already been known.”

Calling for change For innovators and entrepreneurs like Ian Brighthope, Australia’s laws are behind the zeitgeist, and stifling the potential of individuals, and industry. Australian politicians call for innovation but actively suppress any realistic innovation. This occurs frequently if it is not in the pecuniary interests of the mainstream.

“According to one of my colleagues, it is easier to buy a gun in Australia than it is to get legal cannabis. He has sarcastically noted that the levels of security applied to medicinal cannabis access is greater than the levels applied to prisoners breaking out of jail.”

It will take a monumental, global shift to force the politicians in Australia to move faster to open up access to medicinal cannabis, according to Brighthope.

If the United Nations were to de-schedule it as a prohibited narcotic, we may see CBD -only products on Australian shelves within two years, and THC containing compounds within the next five years.

The commercialisation process is most advanced in Victoria, where there has been a hard push for policy change.

There are five million Australians suffering from chronic pain. Brighthope notes that many are addicted to opiates that result in addiction, invalidism and premature death. The other issue will be de-criminalising the driving of motorcars for patients using medically prescribed cannabis.

“Medicinal cannabis is the solution for most of these people, who, by the way, don’t have a voice,” says Brighthope.

“How can you be prescribed a medicine, then be convicted and lose your license for taking it? Taking medication should not be considered a crime, especially when there are so many prescribed medicines, such as the opiates and tranquillisers that cause driving impairment.”

Undoubtedly, without a viable Australian market, it will be overseas patients who stand to benefit from Australian knowledge and ingenuity.