Up in Smoke: Where Cannabis Meets the Immune System

Since the discovery of cannabinoid receptors in the mid-1990s, researchers have been trying to determine their role and how they affect the immune system. Barbara Kaplan, Mississippi State University, discusses research in this area with co-hosts Anne Chappelle and David Faulkner and also shares what scientists are discovering about CBD, vaping, THC, and more.

About the Guest
Barbara Kaplan, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Center for Environmental Health Sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Mississippi State University. She got her BS in environmental toxicology at University of California Davis and her PhD in pharmacology and toxicology from Michigan State University. Before starting her own lab at Mississippi State, she conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago and worked as a Research Assistant Professor at Michigan State. Her transition from MSU to MSU was easy!

The focus of her lab is trying to understand effects and mechanisms by which drugs and chemicals affect the immune system. She has National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to study aryl hydrocarbon receptor ligands on antibody signaling and also has been studying the immune effects of marijuana chemicals for more than 20 years. Her work was some of the first to suggest that cannabidiol (CBD) exhibited immune suppressive effects through a mechanism similar to other well-known drugs, such as cyclosporin.

With the passage of the Farm Bill that legalized CBD from hemp and US Food and Drug Administration approval of a CBD-containing therapy for epilepsy, information—and misinformation—about CBD and other marijuana chemicals has exploded. Therefore, she has been active in obtaining and practicing her science communication skills. She attended the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science bootcamp at Stony Brook University in 2017 and got to meet with Mr. Alda when he gave a presentation at Mississippi State University in 2018. She has been involved with many workshops and other training sessions since then, including a recent interactive Continuing Education course for SOT in which attendees learned some basic science communication skills, presented an aspect of their science in small groups, and then received constructive feedback in real time.

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