BioReactor Weed – No cannabis plant required and 12x stronger than the original

There will come a time when the pharmaceutical industry will no longer need cannabis plants to harness the power of phytocannabinoids. In fact, this would probably be the optimal solution for everyone and will create a distinct difference between “recreational cannabis” and “medical cannabis”.

Apparently the people of Israel who cloned cannabis cells at 12x potency in a bioreactor agree.

Today we’re going to dive deep into this emerging technology and what it means for cannabis in the medical space and why it’s probably best for the pharmaceutical industry to go down this path.

A company in Israel – BioHarvest Sciences – has successfully cloned hemp cells to grow them into a substance (not the cannabis plant) with all the active compounds found in cannabis. This includes the smaller cannabinoids.

Obviously, the first two cannabinoids we’re going to focus on are THC and CBD, but if this technology works the way it’s intended, it would mean you could be mass-producing rarer cannabinoids in less time and at a lower cost Post-harvest processing.

According to the company, they use less water and take much less time to harvest the active ingredients.

“We don’t grow the plant at all,” BioHarvest CEO Ilan Sobel told The Times of Israel. Instead, the process involves “replicating” cells taken from a hemp plant in large tanks called bioreactors to produce large numbers of identical cells.

“We grow them in huge bioreactors in just three weeks – while regular cannabis takes 14 to 23 weeks,” Sobel said. “Our technology can also significantly increase the percentage of active ingredients by weight compared to what is normally found in the plant.”
SOURCE: TIMES OF ISRAEL

Three weeks is an amazing achievement! As Sobel mentions, growing cannabis plants takes anywhere from three to five months, and that doesn’t include curing. If a company can take three weeks to harvest copious amounts of cannabinoids, that means they can manufacture cannabinoid-specific drugs in specific quantities.

They also have much tighter control over the environment, meaning they can create conditions that favor one form of development over another. Although they don’t disclose all the technologies they use for proprietary reasons, the biopharmaceutical industry may have found a way to finally “patent” their drugs without entering into the “who owns a plant” argument.

This is one of the reasons pharma has been so reluctant to embrace cannabis as a medicine. Since there are no patents on cannabis, anyone can grow it considering it is a plant. In fact, you can grow your own cannabis, extract RSO from it, and essentially self-medicate yourself.

However, how this technology is changing the approach is;

1. Larger amounts of specific cannabinoids

2. Reduced “Harvest” time

3. Increased potency

In other words, they can use the cannabinoids as “materia prima” – meaning they don’t have to grow cannabis plants to produce the materia prima… they can skip this process entirely.

Sobel said: “By tailoring specific conditions to which the cells are exposed, we can produce different desired compositions of active ingredients, which means that we can select and deselect the different cannabinoids [compounds].”

The biomass that comes out of the bioreactor is made up of cells identical to those found in plant-derived cannabis, and there’s no genetic modification, Sobel said. Patients can get it in smokable form or as pills, drops, gum, and a number of other formats. (Source: TIMES OF ISRAEL)

As you can see, this can also have an impact on the leisure market. Especially companies that want to create unique infusions. Additionally, biomass is still capable of producing “smokable” options, meaning there’s even a market for vapes and “joints.”

Of course, unlike the cannabis plant, it will not produce all the “soup” of compounds that the cannabis plant naturally makes. These are clones after all and will never progress beyond their genetic script.

Cannabis strains are bred to promote certain cannabinoids over others, but they also produce terpenes, flavonoids, and all those smaller cannabinoids within their genetic limits. Still, this “free range” type of cannabis has the ability to evolve over time.

This could mean that you would be able to “taste” a difference between biomass weed and regular cannabis plants. Of course, scientists would also be able to make terpenes and flavonoids and replicate essentially any strain if they could get their hands on the cells.

The controlled environment of the bioreactor could overcome two challenges of cannabis cultivation: contamination and plants with different concentrations of active compounds. Sobel said the bioreactor’s protected environment keeps out contaminants such as fungi and the controlled nature of the process provides a product with consistent levels of compounds.

BioHarvest claims that once its biomass takes off, it will deliver the benefits of medicinal cannabis cheaper and with less environmental impact. Because, according to the company’s calculations, eight times more material is produced per kilowatt of electricity from the bioreactor than from plants. When it comes to water, each gallon produces 54 times more bioreactor material than plant material. The space requirement is reduced by more than 90%.
Source: TIMES OF ISRAEL

As mentioned, this is good for pharmaceutical companies who would much rather have controlled environments where they can streamline certain cannabinoids while reducing costs.

“The bottom line is that we can make cannabis and hemp much more useful than before, at a lower cost to our planetary resources,” Sober commented. “It’s a wellness and sustainability solution from Israel that can make a truly inspiring contribution to the world.”

While there will be some companies that will prefer using biomass cannabis to infuse their products due to the cost advantage, many cannabis consumers will still prefer cannabis plants. I don’t think these two sources will ever compete in the recreational market.

On an industrial scale, however, it makes sense to make biomass harvesting a priority. They not only reduce the “time expenditure”, but also the water and energy costs. When the U.S. finally legalizes cannabis, demand will likely outstrip supply.

When countries like Mexico come into play, we can expect the country to become a major supplier of hemp and cannabis. However, these biomass processing plants are likely to become the source of supply for pharmaceutical and large-scale industries that rely on large amounts of specific cannabinoids in their products.

Also, considering that it’s ‘cloned’ means that you can actually maintain a standard – whereas with cannabis plants there are always variations when it comes to potency and harvest consistency.

What I can see is that “BioMass Joints” could be an additional product that the recreational market could offer. People would be willing to smoke a “lump of biomass” that has been scientifically studied for a specific effect.

However, we won’t know until this technology is available to the world. Currently it is still in the research and development phase and will most likely be available for the pharmaceutical industry first.

In a few years (or decades), the notion that cannabinoids are derived from plants for medicinal purposes will be a thing of the past. It makes little sense for the pharmaceutical industry to cultivate if they can bypass the process.

That doesn’t mean they won’t create their own strains. Instead, I can see the industry creating dedicated grow facilities where they experiment with strains, and when they find a plant that produces the optimal standard for their drugs, they just clone it in a bioreactor.

This means that the “type of strain” used in this process will have greater importance, meaning there will be companies keen to buy specific strains for breeders.

It seems that cannabis breeders will become more important over time.

For those of you who don’t know what a bioreactor is, don’t worry!

A bioreactor refers to any manufactured device or system that supports a biologically active environment.[1] In one instance, a bioreactor is a vessel in which a chemical process involving organisms or biochemically active substances derived from such organisms is carried out. This process can be either aerobic or anaerobic. These bioreactors are typically cylindrical, ranging in size from liters to cubic meters, and are often made of stainless steel.[citation needed] It can also refer to a device or system designed to grow cells or tissues in the context of cell culture.[2] These devices are developed for use in tissue engineering or in biochemistry/bioprocess engineering. Source Wikipedia

If this is a bit too complicated to understand, one Reddit user simplified it;

Cells cultured in a bioreactor are undifferentiated. The plant equivalent of stem cells. They don’t form tissue like leaves, branches or flowers, they just keep replicating themselves like a tumor. It controls plant cancers that are triggered by hormones. Source: Reddit

As we continue to embrace a world of cannabis, we will see technologies step in to provide solutions for industries that will benefit from the mass production of certain cannabinoids.

While I will still be smoking my plants, I would certainly at least try a “biomass joint” if it ever came to market.

What do you make of it?

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