Perhaps the best opening question to start the article on sweet Mary’s charms, would be why are we so interested in these volatile compounds. Our own interest started prior to November of 2013, because by that time we sponsored Dr. Justin Fischedick as a guest lecturer in Portland.
He lectured our group on how to distinguish the different cannabis strains by their GC and HPLC/MS profiles, as well as his research into the potential medicinal effects of the cannabis terpenes and terpenoids ostensibly having future impact. At that time he was completing a post-doctoral research associate at Washington State University studying other plants that produce medicinally valuable terpenoids.
Dr Justin Fischedick lecturing on terpenes at NCP in Portland.
Dr. Fischedick received his Master’s degree and PhD from Leiden University in Holland, where he worked on numerous projects related to medicinal cannabis. His scientific publications in the area of cannabis research at the time of this lecture included:
Fischedick, J.T., Hazekamp, A., Erkelens, T., Choi, Y.H., Verpoorte, R., 2010. Metabolic fingerprinting of Cannabis sativa L, cannabinoids and terpenoids for chemotaxonomic and drug standardization purposes. Phytochemistry 71, 2058–2073.
Fischedick, J., Van Der Kooy, F., Verpoorte, R., 2010. Cannabinoid Receptor 1 Binding Activity and Quantitative Analysis of Cannabis sativa L. Smoke and Vapor. Chem. Pharm. Bull. 58, 201–207.
Fischedick, J.T., Glas, R., Hazekamp, A., Verpoorte, R., 2009. A Qualitative and Quantitative HPTLC Densitometry Method for the Analysis of Cannabinoids in Cannabis sativa L. Phytochem. Anal. 20, 421–426.
Hazekamp, A., Fischedick, J.T., 2012. Cannabis – from cultivar to chemovar. Drug Test Anal 4, 660–667.
Hazekamp, A., Fischedick, J.T., Díez, M.L., Lubbe, A., Ruhaak, R.L., 2010. 3.24 – Chemistry of Cannabis, in:Editors-in-Chief: Lew Mander, Hung-Wen (Ben) Liu (Eds.), Comprehensive Natural Products II. Elsevier, Oxford, pp. 1033–1084.
Hee, hee, hee, the good news is that the good doctor finished his advanced studies at Washington State University, found inspiring employment in the golden land of CA with his lovely and precocious wife, where he still deeply involved in plant terpene related studies.
The better news yet for us’ns and ya’ll, is that he not only gave us permission to post the video a volunteer took of his lecture, but to post some of his studies, which I believe ya’ll will find insightful and interesting.
Sadly, the lighting came out terrible, and it required some magic from one of Studio McDermott’s interns to lighten it up enough to view, so apologies up front. For the next lecture that we sponsored by Dr Robert, we rented top notch equipment and the visual part came out perfect, it was the sound track that was blown out and unsalvageable
Here is a link to the video of his lecture, which sadly is not of the best quality, but it is more than compensated for by the quality of his lecture, which is about 2 1/2 hours long, so get prepared, get comfortable, and sit back and enjoy both the lecture and the question and answer period following lunch. Might I suggest you have pencil and paper handy, so as to take notes??
As another treat, here is a link to his paper on Identification of Terpenoid Chemotypes Among High (_)-trans-D9- Tetrahydrocannabinol-Producing Cannabis sativa L. Cultivars, published by Liebettpub.com/can.