Anxiety and depression are the two most common neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide, affecting an estimated 284- and 264-million people, respectively, per year as of 2018. The current medications available to treat these disorders (e.g., benzodiazepines, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) have a low rate of response with numerous unpleasant side effects (i.e., heart problems, suicidal ideation, insomnia, memory loss). Despite this, very few new treatment options have come to the market in the last twenty years.
Cannabidiol (CBD) and psilocybin have both recently been investigated as potential treatment agents. CBD and psilocybin are both natural products of which research has shown promise for their use to treat several diseases. This project, developed in partnership with Halucenex Life Sciences Inc. (Windsor, NS, CA), aimed to formulate a drug delivery vehicle containing CBD, psilocybin, and a combination of the two using several emulsification and encapsulation techniques. It is hypothesized that combining CBD and psilocybin will allow them to work synergistically, enhancing their effects. The encapsulation of active ingredients in a suitable wall material allows for protection from degradation, enhances adsorption in the body, increases the stability and shelf-life of the product, and allows for a controlled release of the active pharmaceutical ingredients.
Progesterone was used in preliminary experiments as a proxy for CBD, whereas 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP) or tryptophan were used as proxies for psilocybin. The techniques explored included inverse gelation and external gelation, as well as powder complexes and Pickering emulsions. The original inverse gelation method was not successful, and thus no data is reported. A second version of the inverse gelation method, as well as the external gelation method, were successful and yielded gel-like spheres loaded with the active ingredient. The emulsions were analyzed to determine their zeta potential, size, and polydispersity index (PDI). The active ingredient was re-extracted from the gels and analyzed with High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) to determine their encapsulation efficiencies.
The most promising methods for each active pharmaceutical ingredient were determined to be (1) External Gelation for progesterone (EE% = 33 ± 5), (2) Physical Mixture/External Gelation for CBD (EE% = 48 ± 10), (3) UV for 5-HTP (EE% = 42), (4) UV for tryptophan (EE% = 1.4 ± 0.3), and (5) [5:5] [EMULSION:ALGINATE] for the double encapsulation of CBD and tryptophan (EE% = 61 ± 8). These results suggest that the combination of the tested active ingredients may be enhancing their effects and allowing them to work synergistically. However, more studies must be done (specifically with CBD:psilocybin) to confirm.