Plant With Cannabis Qualities Opens New Avenues For Medical Use

(JNS) A velvety yellow plant native to South Africa could open new doors for developing medicines currently requiring cannabis plants, Israeli researchers have discovered.

A team of researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science found that the woolly umbrella, or Helichrysum umbraculigerum, produces a number of active compounds found in cannabis, including some that have medical uses. The team’s findings were published in the peer-reviewed Nature Plants journal on Monday.

The compounds, known as cannabinoids, are widely used to relieve pain, nausea, anxiety and epileptic seizures, and the list of their possible uses is rapidly growing.

The Weizmann team identified more than 40 cannabinoids found in the wooly umbrella. The researchers also revealed the series of biochemical steps the plant takes when it makes these compounds and showed how these steps can be reproduced in a laboratory to synthesize or even engineer new cannabinoids that currently do not exist in nature.

Although the more familiar cannabis plant produces more than 100 different cannabinoids, the wooly umbrella is a fast-growing perennial plant.

“We have found a major new source of cannabinoids and developed tools for their sustained production, which can help explore their enormous therapeutic potential,” said Dr. Shirley Berman, who led the study.