NMR spectroscopy applied to the metabolic analysis of homemade products based on Cannabis sativa for medicinal purposes

ARGAÑARAZ, IGNACIO; LEONARDO PELLIZZA; ARAN, MARTÍN

Congreso; IV LAMPS MEETING; 2022

Cannabis sativa is a versatile plant often used to produce fiber, oil and medicine. It iscurrently gaining popularity due to the high nutritional properties of the seed oil and thepharmacological activity of the cannabinoid fraction in the inflorescence. In recent years,new laws and regulations allowed the use of homemade medicinal products around theword. In Argentine, the use and production of homemade cannabis-based medical productswere legalized in 2017. Although its popularity has increased since then, home productionstill faces uncertainties about the cannabinoids content in medical preparations. Key factorssuch as the use of stable genotypes or reproducible extraction methods have a significantinfluence on the final composition of medicinal products. In this context, facile and rapidquantitative methods to determine the cannabinoid content are crucial. The current standardmethods (e.g. liquid chromatography combined with tandem mass spectrometry), require atime-consuming multistep sample preparation. In this study, a quantitative nuclear magneticresonance spectroscopy (qNMR) method for screening cannabinoids in medicinal productswas developed. Using this qNMR method, we analyze the chemical composition of apopulation of 250 cannabis-based medicinal products made by users and producers fromBuenos Aires, Argentina. We found that more than 80% of the analyzed preparations havea total concentration below 10 mg/mL, with an average of XX  XX mg/mL. Acid ∆ 9 -tetrahydrocannabinolic (∆ 9 -THCA) and ∆ 9 -tetrahydrocannabinol (∆ 9 -THC) were the mostconcentrated cannabinoids found in 90% of the samples. In contrast, the concentrations ofcannabidiol (CBD) and acid cannabidiol (CBDA) were significantly lower, with averagevalues of X XX and X XX mg/mL, respectively. Our results indicate that, despite thedifferent variables considered in the manufacture of artisanal preparations, there aresignificant differences in concentration levels compared to the commercial productsavailable for medicinal use in Argentina.