Dr. Ziva Cooper is the Director of the UCLA Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids. She is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Department of Anesthesiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine. Her current research involves understanding variables that influence both the therapeutic potential and adverse effects of cannabis and cannabinoids through double-blind, placebo-controlled studies. One of the variables Ziva and her team are studying ...
Nov 23, 2022
Dr. Swathi Varanasi is a bilingual pharmacist specializing in integrative and preventative health. Dr. Swathi has paved the way for other healthcare professionals to pursue non-traditional career paths through creating postdoctoral training programs, industry internships, and online courses focused on integrative medicine and patient-centered shared decision-making. She co-founded and serves as Chief Scientific Officer of the international award-winning clean beauty and wellness brand, Elēment A...
Nov 09, 2022
Allison Justice is the Founder and CEO of The Hemp Mine, a 30-acre hemp farm in South Carolina that supplies premium hemp genetics bred in-house across the US. The Hemp Mine produces a wide array of consumer products ranging from smokable flowers to topicals to tinctures of different concentrations for humans and animals. Allison also co-founded the Cannabis Research Coalition, a professional group dedicated to addressing the cultivation and postharvest issues that challenge today’s cannabis ind...
Oct 26, 2022
Nathaniel Pennington is the Founder and CEO of Humboldt Seed Company. He has been supplying high-quality cannabis seeds to growers since 2001. In 2018 they hosted the World’s Largest Phenotype Hunt, teaming with local farmers, industry experts, and top researchers, many of whom are CannMed alumni. We talked about the Mega Phenohunt Project as well as Nat’s process for breeding consistent and reproducible cannabis seeds. Topics include: The Phenotype Rating Sheet used to evaluate plants The proce...
Oct 12, 2022
Pam Miles is the CEO and founder of Apothercare, a company that partners with scientists performing women's health research. Cindy Orser, PhD is currently Chief Scientific Officer at CLIP LABS, a cannabis testing laboratory in California, and she has more than 25 years of experience innovating technologies related to cannabis, human diagnostics, and even detecting biothreat agents. Cindy is also a member of the CannMed 23 Advisory Board, and she has been a panelist at several past CannMed events...
Sep 28, 2022
David Traylor is Senior Managing Director at Golden Eagle Partners, a firm he originally founded in to advise life science companies. After advising on various transactions in the life science sector, he took an interest in the cannabis sector and started advising cannabis companies before eventually re-founding Golden Eagle Partners in 2014 to focus on advising companies across the cannabis sector. Before Golden Eagle Partners, David served at leading investment banking firms including Pacific ...
Sep 14, 2022
Kyle R.L. Baker is the CSO and Co-Founder of EcoBuds and CleanTheory. He founded the companies based upon a deep understanding and experience in socio-technical design and econometric modeling and their application to disease mitigation. As a cannabis entrepreneur, Kyle focuses his attention on scientific verification methods and weighted decision-making to ensure the end-to-end delivery of clean and compliant cannabis to consumers, most notably medical patients. Clean cannabis is one of the big...
Aug 31, 2022
Dr. Dale Hunt is a plant scientist, a Cannabis lawyer, and a registered U.S. patent attorney with over 20 years of experience protecting plant varieties in the United States and throughout the world. Dale is the founder of Plant & Planet Law Firm, an Intellectual Property Law practice, where he provides guidance and expertise on patents and IP matters, and aids clients in establishing IP protection for their legal cannabis cultivars, products and businesses. At CannMed 2022, Dale participate...
Aug 17, 2022
Dr. Jeff Chen is the Co-founder and CEO of Radicle Science, a health tech company generating history's first dataset and AI to prove and predict the effects of health and wellness products. Previously, he was the Founder and Exec Director of the UCLA Cannabis Research Initiative. At CannMed 2022, Dr. Chen presented results for Radicle Health’s ACES study, a randomized clinical trial, involving 13 CBD products and 3,000 participants. The project was possible thanks to Radicle Science’s unique, vi...
Aug 03, 2022
Jini Curry is the laboratory director at Modern Canna Laboratories’ Lakeland, FL facility, where she focuses on developing standardized methods for analyzing cannabis to ensure harmful toxins are not present. Before entering the cannabis industry, Jini gained valuable research experience at several well-respected institutes, including Emory University, the National Institute of Aging, and the University of Florida. Curry recently received her Master’s in Medical Cannabis Science and Therapeutics...
Jul 20, 2022
Markus Roggen, President and Chief Scientific Officer at DELIC Labs, is back to discuss the challenges that come with testing psilocybin and psychedelic mushrooms. Markus has been in the cannabis industry since 2014 and has held several executive positions in analytical and production companies. His research into process optimization and analytical methods has been recognized with a number of awards, and he has become a trusted advisor and mentor to multiple startups, startup accelerators and or...
Jul 06, 2022
Heather Grab is a Senior Lecturer at Cornell University’s School of Integrated Plant Science where she delivers best practices for the cultivation and processing of hemp to professionals in Cornell's Hemp Science MPS program. She works with plant breeders, pathologists, biochemists, extension professionals, regulatory officials, and industry partners in New York state and across the globe to translate the latest science and industry insights into a curriculum that covers hemp from soil to sale. ...
Jun 22, 2022
TJ Martin is the VP of R&D at Abstrax, a company that specializes in the research, development, and production of botanically-derived and cannabis-inspired terpenes. TJ and his team recently published a paper that identified a new class of aromatic cannabis compounds called volatile sulfur compounds (VSCs), which are responsible for the signature skunky, gassy smell that is so prominent in certain cannabis cultivars. This was a major breakthrough for their team because as TJ mentions in the ...
Jun 08, 2022
We are back with three more conversations that were recorded live on-site at CannMed 2022 in the CannMed Coffee Talk Lounge. First up is Cultivation Keynote Presenter Seth Crawford from Oregon CBD. Seth discussed: THCV: How it is synthesized in the plant and why it is an important cannabinoid for hemp farmersWhy industrial hemp has not taken off the way some have predicted Oregon CBD’s move into the THC market, offering triploid and tetraploid varieties to cannabis growers. Next, Ini Afia, Chief...
May 25, 2022
CannMed 2022 is officially in the books. Thank you to all our attendees, presenters, sponsors, exhibitors, media partners, and team members behind the scenes who make it all possible. It was great to see everyone in person again and learn about the latest advancements in the field. We discussed novel cannabinoids, new treatment protocols, exciting new advances in breeding and cultivation, stronger safety testing methods and of course, the latest advances in our understanding and use of medicinal...
May 11, 2022
Dr. Kevin Spelman returns to discuss what research has been done on the minor cannabinoids. The major cannabinoids, Delta-9 THC and CBD, have gotten most of the attention when it comes to cannabis medicine research. But we know that cannabis medicine is a team effort, and there are a variety of compounds that contribute to the entourage effect, including terpenoids, flavonoids, stilbenoids, and minor cannabinoids. Kevin has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to medicinal plant, nutraceutical, a...
Apr 27, 2022
Jaime Brambila and his wife Nicole specialize in coaching and educating patients about the clinical use of cannabinoids and other plant-based medicines. The principal aspects of their mission are to democratize plant-based medicine and democratize the science, taking the complex pharmacological information and breaking it down so everyone can understand the therapeutic potential. At CannMed 2022, Jaime will present a case study in which the combined use of cannabis, psilocybin, Ketogenic-LC/HF d...
Apr 13, 2022
Robert Thomas is the principal of Scientific Solutions, a consulting company that serves the training, application, marketing, and writing needs of the trace element user community. He has worked in the field of atomic and mass spectroscopy for more than 45 years, including 25 years for a manufacturer of atomic spectroscopic instrumentation. In recent years, Rob has become a prolific writer on the topic, with more than 100 technical publications to his name. He has authored three textbooks on IC...
Mar 30, 2022
Punya Nachappa, PhD runs a research program at Colorado State University that is focused on understanding the interactions between plants, pathogens, and insect vectors in crops, including hemp. Her team recently published a paper that identified several different viruses in Colorado hemp samples, most notably Beet Curly Top Virus (BCTV), which is a pathogen known to infect several different plant species. in our conversation we discuss: The prevalence of BCTV in Colorado hemp How BCTV compares ...
Mar 16, 2022
Itzhak Kurek, PhD is CEO & Co-Founder of Cannformatics. Itzhak and his team are measuring the effectiveness of cannabis-based medicines using biomarkers. So far, they have identified dozens of cannabis-responsive biomarkers that can be used to objectively quantify the physiological impact of medical cannabis treatment and provide a tool for investigating the metabolic pathways affected by medical cannabis and CBD. Their pilot study looked at patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder and was pub...
Mar 02, 2022
Lelehnia DuBois and Daniel Hendricks are longtime Humboldt County residents who are working to preserve the unique culture and cannabis genetics that have developed in the region. Along with other collaborators, they have created The Humboldt Grace Legacy Project for the purpose of working to protect, authenticate, and validate legacy cannabis genetics through collaborative design. Lele is the Founder and Board Chair of Humboldt Grace, whose mission is to empower the community in rural northwest...
Feb 16, 2022
Dr. Ethan Russo returns to the podcast to help us make sense of the slew of studies and articles claiming cannabis can treat and/or prevent COVID-19 infection. Dr. Russo is a board-certified neurologist, a psychopharmacology researcher, an author, a lecturer, and a consultant. He is a CannMed 2022 Keynote Presenter, where he will present on Cannabis and Psychiatry. Although Dr. Russo is not a virologist, he is a very accomplished medical cannabis researcher, and he is well-qualified to help us f...
Feb 02, 2022
Ini Afia is the Chief Science Officer at Cannasafe, a licensed cannabis testing lab in southern California. He has also set up multiple labs with best-in-class methodology, processes, and technology throughout his career. And at Cannasafe he has the team towards greater credibility, consistency, and accountability for their clients, regulators, and consumers. Ini returns to the podcast to discuss the push to standardize cannabis testing labs in California. In late November, the California Depart...
Jan 19, 2022
Dr. Bonni Goldstein returns to the podcast to discuss examples where cannabis may be a safer and more effective therapeutic than traditional pharmaceutical drugs. Bonni is one of the country’s most respected and experienced medical cannabis physicians, having treated thousands of patients with medical cannabis. She is the owner and medical director of Canna-Centers Wellness & Education. She is Clinical Advisor to Cannformatics. And she is the author of the book titled “Cannabis is Medicine: ...
Jan 05, 2022
Allison Justice, PhD, is Co-owner and manages operations at The Hemp Mine, a 40-acre hemp farm that manufactures consumer-ready products. The Hemp Mine currently produces a wide array of different products ranging from smokeable flower to tinctures of different concentrations for both humans and animals. The Hemp Mine breeds, regional trials indoors and outdoors at scale in order to offer validated hemp genetics to the hemp market in the form of stage III tissue culture, unrooted cuttings and ro...
Dec 08, 2021
Amy Simpson and BigMike Straumietis talk about Humanity Heroes, a charity that is providing essential living supplies to the homeless community living on the streets and in shelters across America. BigMike, who you likely know as the CEO of Advanced Nutrients, founded Humanity Heroes with the idea that “if a company has the financial resources, then it has a social responsibility to help humanity as a whole.” Amy is the Fundraising Manager at Humanity Heroes, organizing all the events the team p...
Nov 24, 2021
Dedi Meiri, PhD runs a lab at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology that investigates the anti-tumor effects of cannabinoids. More specifically, his team identifies which combination of cannabinoids can kill cancer cells. Most notably, his team identified three specific cannabinoids that kill leukemia cells and that formulation is currently being tested in a clinical trial in Israel. Dr. Meiri is a three-time CannMed presenter. Most recently he delivered a one-hour keynote presentation at ...
Nov 10, 2021
Collin Palmer is the Chief Experience Officer at Vessel Life Science. He has been obsessed with growing cannabis since he started growing in his backyard at 15 years old. Since then he has consulted with many cannabis companies in a variety of areas including genetic selection, lab optimization, product development, branding, and more. Over the past several years he has worked on bringing that experience to Vessel Life Science, which has been focused on working with several brands to bring new s...
Oct 27, 2021
Michael Levinsohn is a criminal and civil defense attorney with 20 years of experience representing people in all areas of the cannabis industry, including patients, cultivators, retailers, and healthcare providers. We catch up on new developments in cannabis law since last we spoke, including Ryan’s Law, which requires California hospitals providing palliative care allow terminally ill patients to use cannabis The likely reason Ryan’s Law is restricted to terminally ill patients and what hospit...
Oct 13, 2021
David Joly, PhD is Associate Professor at the University of Moncton, where his team investigates cannabis and cannabinoids. Dr. Joly has unique expertise in the field of plant cannabis genomics and their associated microbes, and his work has been cited more than 1000 times. Earlier this year, Dr. Joly published a paper titled “Genome-wide characterization of the MLO gene family in Cannabis sativa reveals two genes as strong candidates for powdery mildew susceptibility”. It’s an important paper w...
Sep 29, 2021
