Medicinal cannabis and cancer chemotherapy drug interactions

Julia A Slancar^1* and Caleb Economou²

¹Department of Pharmacology, University of Sydney, Icon Cancer Centre Southport, QLD 4215, Australia

²University of Sydney, Icon Cancer Centre Southport, QLD 4215, Australia

*Corresponding Author : Slancar JA, Department of Pharmacology
University of Sydney, Icon Cancer Centre Southport, QLD 4215, Australia, Tel: +61431334830; E-mail: jsla4889@uni.sydney.edu.au

Received date: February 19, 2019; Accepted date: March 05, 2020; Published date: March 12, 2020

Citation: Slancar JA, Economou C (2020) Medicinal Cannabis and Cancer Chemotherapy Drug Interactions. J Forensic Toxicol Pharmacol 9:1. doi: 10.37532/jftp.2020.9(1).140

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.