Highly Kosher Professionals: Dr Ethan Russo

JIW: What fields of medicine did you mainly study while attending UMass Chan Medical School? Were plant/natural medicines even discussed at all throughout your studies?

Ethan: My medical education was very standard, meaning that it included almost nothing about plant medicines and natural healing. Those were areas in which I had teenage interest that I had to regenerate subsequently after becoming disenchanted with the results that “conventional medicine” was providing to my patients. Fortunately for me, this tangential fork in the road certainly rekindled my passion for medicine and healing and likely vastly prolonged what might have been a much shorter career in the healing arts.

JIW: What first caught your professional attention about cannabis and its possibilities?

Ethan: I understood that cannabis has medical applications as early in 1970 my female friends in college described its ability to alleviate symptoms of dysmenorrhea (menstrual pains). This was reinforced in 1980 in my neurology residency, when at the VA Hospital in Seattle, a clinic patient espoused the value of cannabis in his pipe tobacco to keep him out of the hospital with bouts of paralysis from myasthenia gravis. Once in practice, many of my patients found symptomatic value in cannabis, especially with multiple sclerosis. Once Proposition 215 catalyzed the medical movement in 1996, cannabis therapeutics became part of my daily discussion with patients and families.   

JIW: How does your Jewish identity play a role in both your professional and personal life?

Ethan: Profoundly. While I cannot consider myself observant religiously, I am extremely invested culturally as a “hybrid” Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jew. Cannabis has had a role in Jewish medicine, science, and tradition far greater than is commonly understood, and I hope to highlight that in my current research efforts. To me, this is a natural and inescapable mission. I have always felt myself an outsider in my professional life, a sort of salmon swimming upstream against the current, dodging the eagles and bears. I take to heart the Jewish values of iconoclasm, supporting the oppressed, and striving for higher values, the essence of the Tikun Olam, healing the world.   

JIW: What are your duties as a member of the Cannabis Expert Panel for United States Pharmacopoeia (USP)? How do you advocate for more research and studies into cannabis?

Ethan: As the only physician on a large panel of biochemists, pharmacologists, laboratory analysts and the like, I attempt to ensure that a therapeutic focus on herbal cannabis is maintained, and that concepts of botanical synergy and the “entourage effect” are not lost in the tendency of the industry to rush toward cannabinoid isolates, semi-synthetics and new chemical entities. The cannabis plant and patients who follow her frequently develop a beautiful mutualism or even symbiosis. That fact can be easily overlooked in the course of scientific analysis and bureaucratic rulemaking.

JIW: How does your medical background provide you with a better understanding of your role as Chief Medical Officer for Andira Pharmaceuticals?

Ethan: It is crucial. Fortunately, Dana Lambert, PhD, the Founder and CEO of the company also comes from a clinical background as a hospital pharmacist who was able to experience the patient experience first-hand with all its challenges and demands. The striving for more effective therapies from cannabis and a better patient experience are prime motivations at the company. The pipeline of cannabis-based pharmaceuticals for revolutionary anti-microbial treatment, wound healing, and primary treatment of cancer with their obvious value as “disruptive technologies” portend to be headline news in the coming years.

JIW: Where do you see cannabis research going in the future? How did the recent rescheduling and its subsequent ripple effects change how cannabis is researched? 

Ethan: While the planned rescheduling may reduce the bureaucratic and logistical challenges inherent with Schedule I with its onerous security and intrusive demands, it remains to be seen how the system will perform. While I hope for improvement, it will remain the case that most of my research and consultation work will occur extra-USA.

Beyond that, we will be seeing a great deal more evidence for the therapeutic value of the “minor cannabinoids.” Cannabigerol (CBG) has vast potential applications as an antibiotic component, non-intoxicating, non-sedating anti-anxiety agent, and chemotherapeutic agent. On that score, the future is bright, but only if the research receives the funding that it merits.  

Ethan Russo, MD, is a board-certified neurologist, psychopharmacology researcher, and author. He is the Founder and CEO of credo-science.com and the creator of the course Foundations of Cannabis Therapeutics with Ethan Russo, MD: An Evidence-Based Medical Cannabis Education Course.

Previously, he was Director of Research and Development of the International Cannabis and Cannabinoids Institute (ICCI) based in Prague, Czech Republic. Medical Director of PHYTECS (2015-2017), a biotechnology company researching and developing innovative approaches targeting the human endocannabinoid system, and from 2003-2014, he served as Senior Medical Advisor, medical monitor and study physician to GW Pharmaceuticals, United Kingdom for numerous Phase I-III clinical trials of Sativex® for alleviation of cancer pain unresponsive to optimized opioid treatment and initial studies of Epidiolex® for intractable epilepsy.

He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania (Psychology), and the University of Massachusetts Medical School, before residencies in Pediatrics in Phoenix, Arizona and in Child and Adult Neurology at the University of Washington in Seattle. He was a clinical neurologist in Missoula, Montana for 20 years in a practice with a strong chronic pain component. In 1995, he pursued a 3-month sabbatical doing ethnobotanical research with the Machiguenga people in Parque Nacional del Manu, Peru.

He has held faculty appointments in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Montana, in Medicine at the University of Washington, and as visiting professor, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Harvard University, and Johns Hopkins University.

He is a Past-President of the International Cannabinoid Research Society and is former Chairman of the International Association for Cannabinoid Medicines. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for the American Botanical Council. He is author of Handbook of Psychotropic Herbs, co-editor of Cannabis and Cannabinoids: Pharmacology, Toxicology and Therapeutic Potential, and author of The Last Sorcerer: Echoes of the Rainforest. He was founding editor of Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics, selections of which were published as books: Cannabis Therapeutics in HIV/AIDS, Women and Cannabis: Medicine, Science and Sociology, Cannabis: From Pariah to Prescription, and Handbook of Cannabis Therapeutics: From Bench to Bedside. He has also published numerous book chapters, and over fifty articles in neurology, pain management, cannabis, and ethnobotany. His research interests have included correlations of historical uses of cannabis to modern pharmacological mechanisms, phytopharmaceutical treatment of migraine and chronic pain, herbal synergy and phytocannabinoid/terpenoid, serotonergic and vanilloid interactions.

He has consulted or lectured on these topics in 39 US states and Canadian provinces and 39 countries.