Marijuana has been ingrained in American popular culture since the 1970’s. Most Americans know about pot, weed, Mary Jane, and the like but what most people don’t know is that we all have cannabis-like molecules all over in our bodies. Endocannabinoids, while they don’t produce the high of THC, they are involved in many chemical pathways throughout the body. Researchers now believe that these pathways may be involved in anti-cancer functions. Because these molecules are already present in the body, they could be one way the human body fights cancer on its own. This revelation has led many people to suggest that the use of medical marijuana can be a critical step to the treatment and cure of cancer.
The way most of these anti-cancer pathways work is by promoting programmed cell death, or apoptosis, in cancerous cells. One of the foggy parts of this story is how endocannabinoids target cancer cells specifically and leave healthy cells alone. This is a crucial question that needs to be answered before mainstream cancer treatment with endocannabinoids can be viable. The knowledge we have today will serve as a great starting point for more discovery of endocannabinoid’s cancer-fighting potential but is not yet sufficient.
The stigma around marijuana use is still greatly accepted by mainstream America and this will also slow down the acceptance of this new, radical treatment. With medical marijuana bills passing in several states and Colorado legalizing marijuana outright recently, the tides of public opinion seem to be changing. This will go a long way to not only making marijuana treatment more socially acceptable, but pushing scientists to study its effects in an effort to fill in some of the glaring blanks still left in our current understanding of endocannabinoids.
Endocannabinoids & the Frontier of Cancer Treatment
