Why is it in news?
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Three major science administrators in India ””
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The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research,
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the Indian Council for Medical Research and
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the Department of Biotechnolgy ”” are getting together to promote research in herbal drugs, some of which involve deriving new drugs from marijuana.
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Among the first such studies likely to kick off is joint investigation by the CSIR-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (CSIR-IIIM) and the Tata Memorial Centre (TMC), Mumbai.
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Here researchers will test whether strains of marijuana grown at the CSIR-IIIM campus in Jammu could be effective in the treatment of breast cancer, sickle-cell anaemia as well as be “bio-equivalent” (similar in make-up and effect) to marijuana-derived drugs already approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (U.S. FDA)
Restricted cultivation
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Marijuana (or hemp), more formally parts of the cannabis super-family, is illegal for commercial cultivation though it grows as weed in several parts of the country.
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Uttarakhand, Jammu and ”” as of this month Uttar Pradesh ”” have allowed restricted cultivation of the plant for medical research.
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The studies into the therapeutic potential of marijuana is part of a larger governmental thrust to making new drugs derived from herbs and plants that find mention in Ayurvedic and other traditional-medicine knowledge systems.
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The U.S. FDA this year approved Epidiolex (cannabidiol) [CBD] oral solution for the treatment of seizures associated with two rare and severe forms of epilepsy, Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and Dravet syndrome.
Source
The Hindu