Potential Applications of Cannabis Plant Extracts and Phytochemicals as Natural Antimicrobials

Cannabis sativa L. or marijuana, is a flowering plant that has been used for millennia for food, drugs (both legal and illegal), textile (hemp), and religious purposes. Selective breeding has resulted in numerous C. sativa strains (cultivars) with different properties. For example, hemp strains are fibrous and low in cannabinoids, while medicinal strains are highly flowering and contain both phytonutrients and phytochemicals. Bioactive compounds can be extracted from oils or as aqueous phases from seeds, flowers, leaves, and stems using traditional techniques such as cold-pressing and solvent extraction or by contemporary procedures like ultrasound. Supercritical fluid extraction with carbon dioxide (SFE-CO2) is another technology used in industry to extract phytochemical compounds. This is no different from other plant products, which have been historically used as rich sources of natural products for human health.

Potential therapeutic applications and bioactive mechanisms of crude Cannabis extracts and purified compounds derived from C. sativa have been investigated in various pharmacological scenarios, including their use as anti-convulsive, analgesic, anti-anxiety, and anti-emetic therapeutic drugs. While much research has centered around the psychoactive properties of cannabinoids, the antimicrobial properties of compounds extracted from C. sativa are now becoming of particular interest due to the emergence of antimicrobial resistance as a vital threat to human health globally. Mitigating the human and economic impacts of this problem, and more broadly, the emergence of new microbial pathogens, requires identifying and elucidating new antimicrobial therapies.

Fig. 1  Antimicrobial activity of cannabinoids like cannabidiol (CBD), cannabigerol (CBG), cannabichromene (CBC), cannabinol (CBN), and delta-8-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ8-THC).

Reference:

Journal of Exploratory Research in Pharmacology   2023;8(2):121-130 doi: 10.14218/JERP.2022.00062