Joint Committee

The FDA is considering the country’s first prescription drug made from marijuana, which could revolutionize epilepsy treatment

- Kate Sheridan

THE U.S. FOOD AND DRUG Administration might approve a prescription medication made from marijuana this summer, a huge step forward for people with epilepsy, which the drug treats. It would also signal a new—some would say long-delayed—embrace of cannabis based medications.

GW Pharmaceuticals, the company behind the drug, called Epidiolex, started the approval process with the FDA last year. A study it funded, published in The Lancet in January, offered encouraging signs. One hundred and seventy people with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (a rare, severe and difficult to treat form of epilepsy) were given either a placebo or an anti-seizure medication with cannabidiol, or CBD. The result: The CBD medication cut the number of seizures per month by 41 percent. Adding a placebo reduced it by roughly 14 percent. “It’s exciting that it shows efficacy,” says one of the researchers, Dr. Elizabeth Thiele, director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s pediatric epilepsy program (who worked with GW Pharmaceuticals for four years).