We all know someone who’s been touched by cancer.
It’s been called the worst scourge of civilized mankind. It sweeps through a family, disrupting our perfectly ordered lives, throwing everything into disarray, and leaves us diminished and mourning.
We tend to think of it as a deeply personal disease without thinking too much about its origins, and may even fall into the trap of thinking that it’s somehow caused by our lifestyles. While there is definitely some truth to that statement, it misses the point that it’s always been a silent predator, stalking us since our earliest days.
That’s why it’s important that companies like Regen BioPharma (RGBP.OTC) are hard at work on the monumental task of finding a solution.
Today, Regen filed a U.S. patent application for a new gene therapy using cannabidiol (CBD). The data draws a connection between CBD and the reduction of the disease’s development in mice without introducing any toxicity.
A cancer-fighting firm
The Company is focused on the immunology and immunotherapy space. The Company is focused on rapidly advancing novel technologies through pre-clinical and Phase I/ II clinical trials. Currently, the Company is focused on small molecule therapies for treating cancer and autoimmune disorders.
Regen extracted immune-system cells from mice called dendritic cells and treated them with CBD, which caused suppression of the ability to activate cancer-fighting T-cells. Except, the CBD had the opposite effect, and actually increased the mice’s ability to produce active T-cells.
Basically, through the introduction of CBD and another gene-suppression therapy called RNA interference, scientists were able to jumpstart the immune system in mice to aid in combating cancerous cells. If the process can be replicated in humans, then it will definitively add “cancer-fighter” to CBD’s long list of potential applications.
And we need it.
The statistics are harrowing:
According to the American Cancer Society, men have a 39.66 percent probability, or approximately a one-in-three risk, of developing the disease in their lifetime. The odds for women are slightly lower, at 37.65 percent.
In 2017, an estimated:
- 103,100 Canadian men were diagnosed with cancer and 42,600 men died from cancer.
- 103,200 Canadian women were diagnosed with cancer and 38,200 women died from cancer.
- On average, 565 Canadians were diagnosed with the disease every day.
- On average, 221 Canadians died from the disease every day.
It’s the largest cause of death in Canada, beating out heart disease by a wide margin.
Other uses for the therapy include treating inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). IBD is a disease caused by persistent and chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, and is a term that refers to both ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. Current treatments include non-specific immune suppressors such as steroids as well as newer drugs recently approved by the FDA.
The IBD market size is estimated at $6.7 billion global and projected to be $7.6 billion by 2023.There are currently no non-steroidal therapies available to IBD sufferers.
Right now there are a number of pre-clinical and clinical trials being performed by other companies related to pain management that otherwise suggest potential benefits for CBD.
The market responded exceptionally well, giving Regen a solid 180% boost to their stock price upon the news.
—Joseph Morton