Cannabis and Mushrooms and Their Tale to Treating Cancer

In Chinese medicine, cannabis and mushrooms have been used to productively treat cancer. These products have an anti-cancer effect which goes through the immune system, complementary to Herceptin used in the treatment of HER2+ breast cancer. Pre-clinical research and testing using spheroid 3D-cell cultures, Appolon’s cannabis and mushroom formulations showed positive results via direct cytotoxicity on HER2+ cancer cells, and activation of the immune system through ADCC (T-cell cytotoxicity) and ADCP (macrophage phagocytosis). In his Keynote Address, Dr. Stephen Barnhill, founder, chairman, and CEO of Apollon Formularies, plc., presented to Cannabis Science Conference East attendees, Apollon products and their cancer killing actions which hold similar efficacy to that of Herceptin and when combined with Herceptin, significantly improved cancer killing activity.

“These formulations are specific formulations. This is not, we have to have a certain strain. We have to have a certain genetic. This is more like a pharmaceutical. You have to have X amount of this cannabinoid, X amount of that cannabinoid, X of amount of this terpene, of this flavonoid,” Dr. Barnhill said. “And these formulations are developed in part using the artificial intelligence techniques that I've been working with for 35 years, where it helps you identify what is the right combination of ingredients for specific treatments. And we have been working on that and treating patients with that for many years.”

Dr. Stephen Barnhill speaking at Cannabis Science Conference East 2022, Baltimore, Maryland.

In a recent interview with Cannabis Science and Technology, Dr. Barnhill stated, “In other words, the chemical directly kills the cancer cells. And then we also did for HER2 breast cancer, immunotherapy studies where we look to see, does the formulation boost the immune system and activate certain cells in the immune system to actually kill these cancer cells? And I'm thrilled report to you and we announced this publicly in press releases for breast cancer and prostate cancer so far that our cannabis solutions formulations were absolutely successful in killing a number of cancer types, the cells for a number of cancer types, nearly 100 percent. I say ‘nearly 100 percent’ because you can't really say 100 percent, but we didn't see any cancer cells left. They didn't see them when they reported back to us, they were quite impressed. And our mushroom formulations were the ones that were tested against the immune system to see if we could activate the immune system.”

Apollon Choose 3D Cell Culture Technology vs 2D Petri Dish Technology.

Additionally, Barnhill noted that they, “had some extremely exciting results there where a test called antibody dependent cellular cytotoxicity, which is where you stimulate the immune system T cells and particularly NK cells, the natural killer cells of the immune system. Much like drugs like Keytruda, which people have heard of, certainly or the new immune drugs. We were actually within four percent of the effectiveness of trastuzumab. And when you combine our formulation with trastuzumab, we had a 60 percent increase in cellular killing and that's extremely important because trastuzumab is sold under Roche's name Herceptin.”