Medicinal cannabis and cancer chemotherapy drug interactions

Medicinal cannabis presents controversial findings and legislations have limited the possible research and trials in Australia. It is of increasing interest to Australian oncologists from the large cases of skin cancer in the population and particularly for palliative comfort. Current cancer chemotherapeutic agents are some of the most cytotoxic drugs available and cause largely harmful side effects to cancer patients. This report reviews existing data and predictive papers on medicinal cannabis drug interactions with chemotherapeutic drugs. The first section gives a background to the important pharmacological aspects of medicinal cannabis and chemotherapy respectively. The next section outlines the drug interactions found on one out of five comprehensive Australian pharmaceutical databases. The concluding remarks summarise the interaction findings and literature limitations for future considerations. *Specific compounds that interact/are affected from findings.