Lexaria Bioscience announces data on DehydraTech-CBD

The company said, "Lexaria Bioscience announces that its patented DehydraTECH-CBD has demonstrated performance enhancements compared to one of the world’s leading anti-seizure medications, Epidiolex. Animal seizure study program EPIL-A21-1 was designed to determine whether DehydraTECH-CBD could provide similar seizure inhibiting efficacy, using an established, vehicle-controlled, acute animal seizure model induced by electrical stimulation, at lower doses than were required with Epidiolex. Epidiolex is the world’s only commercially approved, CBD-powered anti-seizure drug. Lexaria is always searching for the lowest possible efficacious dose levels of the drugs it formulates with DehydraTECH in order to minimize adverse side effects. An initial MES pilot study in animals that examined three different doses revealed that, at the lower doses of 50 mg/kg and 75 mg/kg, DehydraTECH-CBD was more efficacious than Epidiolex in reducing or eliminating seizure activity. Epidiolex was more efficacious than DehydraTECH-CBD in eliminating seizure activity at the highest dose tested in the pilot study of 100 mg/kg. Only DehydraTECH-CBD demonstrated some reduction in seizure activity at the 50 mg/kg dose. At the 75 mg/kg dose DehydraTECH-CBD demonstrated full elimination of seizure activity in 66.6% of the animals compared to 50% of the Epidiolex treated animals. In this regard there was an apparent trend for DehydraTECH-CBD to be more efficacious at lower doses than Epidiolex. Following the pilot experiment, a second MES animal seizure study was performed where time to peak efficacy was measured at various post-dosing time points. DehydraTECH-CBD also showed an apparent trend toward enhanced effectiveness, in this case based on rapidity of action. At the 30-minute timepoint, 50% of the animals dosed with DehydraTECH-CBD showed partial reduction or full elimination of seizure activity whereas 100% of the Epidiolex-dosed animals were exhibiting full seizure activity at 30 minutes. At the 60-minute timepoint 87.5% of the animals dosed with DehydraTECH-CBD showed partial reduction or full elimination of seizure activity compared to 62.5% of the Epidiolex-dosed animals showing partial reduction or full elimination of seizure activity. Epidiolex showed some enhanced seizure reduction capabilities at later time points in the study. Lexaria is encouraged by these results from its first foray into the anti-seizure testing field. The results to-date demonstrate the performance of DehydraTECH-CBD to reduce or eliminate seizure activity in animals and to, in some cases, even surpass the performance of one of the world’s leading anti-seizure medications, Epidiolex. Overall, DehydraTECH-CBD appeared to demonstrate effectiveness at lower doses and more rapidly than Epidiolex. Future work under consideration may include additional DehydraTECH-CBD formulation optimization to support more sustained activity for this therapeutic application, where numerous pharmaceutical strategies exist to achieve prolonged drug action when needed."