The cannabis industry continues to grow with increased momentum as more states and countries pave the way with both medicinal as well as adult use, state-regulated, cannabis programs. What was once an illicit, underground operation is now becoming a well-organized, respectable industry, driven by investment and sophisticated operations. Scientific research and methodologies, long absent from these activities, now play a major role in the optimization of cultivation and manufacturing processes to maximize this growth. Application of supercritical fluid chromatography, using liquid CO2, facilitates the analysis of cannabinoids throughout the entire cultivation and manufacturing process to understand the complex interactions and degradation pathways for the cannabinoids. These analyses are critical for understanding manufacturing processes, patient dosing, and product shelf-life. Most consumer products manufactured from cannabis are based on extraction processes which remove and concentrate the valued cannabinoids from the plant material. While there are many approaches to extraction, Supercritical Fluid Extraction (SFE) using CO2 represents one of the safest, most efficient methods to achieve this. The resulting extract can then be used to produce a variety of consumer products. Understanding the relationship between individual constituent solubility and liquid CO2 density is critical in the optimization of extraction and purification processes. These processes can then be used to improve manufacturing abilities and provide patients and consumers with high quality, safe and reliable products. Here we present the application of a workflow based on supercritical fluid technologies for the analysis, extraction and purification of cannabinoids for the preparation of cannabis based therapeutics.

Applications of supercritical fluid technologies for the analysis, extraction and isolation of cannabinoids for cannabis-based therapeutics

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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