{"id":19013,"date":"2019-11-11T16:44:06","date_gmt":"2019-11-11T16:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/?p=19013"},"modified":"2021-11-03T13:42:19","modified_gmt":"2021-11-03T13:42:19","slug":"10-years-in-the-making-drug-discovered-by-reading-scientists-reaches-uk-children-with-severe-epilepsy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/2019\/11\/11\/10-years-in-the-making-drug-discovered-by-reading-scientists-reaches-uk-children-with-severe-epilepsy\/","title":{"rendered":"10 years in the making: drug discovered by Reading scientists reaches UK children with severe epilepsy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today a new cannabis-derived medicine for severe childhood epilepsy was approved for use on the NHS after over a decade of research at the University of Reading. Here we track the story of the drug’s long journey from bench to bedside.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Epilepsy affects around 50 million people across the world. Most patients can control their seizures using anti-epileptic drugs, but for 30% of epilepsy patients the drugs don’t work, or they produce side effects that cannot be tolerated.<\/p>\n

Now, after many years of work at the University of Reading led by Professors Claire Williams, Gary Stephens and Ben Whalley, a new medicine – Epidiolex – has become the first cannabinoid-derived medicine to be approved for clinical use in epilepsy, providing a safe treatment for thousands of affected patients. This week it has crossed the final hurdle to become available to UK patients on the NHS. Here we tell the story of its development.<\/span><\/p>\n

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1996: Exploring compounds found in cannabis<\/strong><\/h3>\n

A psychologist at the University of Reading, Dr Claire Williams, became involved in research on the 60 compounds derived from cannabis, known as cannabinoids, including looking at whether any of them had potential for alleviating epileptic seizures.<\/p>\n

2000: Early evidence in brain slices<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Pharmacist Dr Ben Whalley published work showing that the non-THC (tetrahydracannabinol) parts of cannabis can inhibit seizure-like activity in rat brain tissue slices in a laboratory dish. He studied the activity of networks of brain cells in tissue slices by measuring the flow of electrical currents through them, in order to better understand how changes to individual neurons can have an effect on the whole organism.<\/p>\n

2007: Reading teams up with GW Pharmaceuticals<\/strong><\/h3>\n

GW Pharmaceuticals<\/a> – a pharmaceutical company and world-leader in plant-derived cannabinoid therapeutics – were keen to explore the compounds discovered by the Reading team further. By 2007, the University of Reading’s Dr Claire Williams, Dr Gary Stephens and Dr Ben Whalley were carrying out pre-clinical research for GW Pharmaceuticals and their drug discovery partner, Otsuka Pharmaceuticals.<\/p>\n