By Ariel Grossman, NoCamels -
More and more patients are turning to medical cannabis for chronic pain relief. But whether they smoke it or ingest it as oil, getting the dose right is always a challenge.
Too much, and they’re stoned for the day, too little and they continue experiencing debilitating pain.
No medicinal cannabis treatment has been able to find that sweet spot – until now.
Israeli startup Syqe Medical says it’s solved the problem with an inhaler that delivers precisely the same dose of vaporized cannabis every time.
The patient simply raises it to their mouth, takes a single breath and that’s it.
Within minutes, the cannabis is absorbed into their bloodstream, alleviating their pain for several hours with minimal side effects.
There’s no smell, no smoke, and no mess. No need to roll a joint or measure the exact amount of oil with a dropper.
The inhaler has a cartridge containing 60 single-use doses, or inhalations, each dose of cannabis packed into a piece of plastic the size of a sim card.
Every sim card, or VaporChip, is capable of releasing four different doses – 250 micrograms (mg), 500mg, 750mg, and 1,000mg.
Each VaporChip has a tiny metal screen that heats up the cannabis. The longer it heats it up, the more active ingredients are emitted from the aerosol during inhalation.
This is in contrast to smoking, or using a vaporizer, which heats cannabis up to a specific temperature to create vapor for patients to inhale. The problem with both is that the user repeatedly inhales heated or burned cannabis, with varying and inconsistent effects.
After conducting three clinical studies at the Rambam Hospital in northern Israel, Syqe discovered the “therapeutic window” of cannabis – the doses of cannabis that will reduce pain without causing psychoactive effects like malaise, dizziness, or euphoria.
“Whenever I take an Advil, I expect the pill to be the same dose, and expect to experience the same effects every time,” says Hagit Kamin, CEO of SyqeAir. “Patients using medical cannabis should be able to do the same thing.
“They don’t need to grind anything, they don’t need to digest anything, they don’t need to know how much cannabis to use. All they need to do is to click a button and inhale,” says Kamin.
“One of the biggest problems in the world of medical cannabis, despite the fact that it reduces chronic pain, is that smoking too much of it can get patients high. We want our patients to be able to function and focus while still reducing their pain.”
Perry Davidson, CEO of the Syqe Group (which owns SyqeAir) founded the company after heading Tikun Olam, Israel’s first cannabis company. He was passionate about the benefits of smoking medical cannabis, especially for older people with chronic pain, and cancer patients.
But he found many of them inadvertently increased their dosage over time and experienced signs of addiction. Not only that, but in some cases their grandchildren would find their stash and start smoking it for fun.
He left the company to create a product that could provide the medical benefits of cannabis to patients without the fear of it being used recreationally or abused.
Today, thousands of patients use the SyqeAir in Israel and in Australia and by the end of the year it should be rolled out to Malta and England.
One patient who uses the device is Nelly Daiboch, 29, who suffers from endometriosis and fibromyalgia. She said: “I didn’t know what to do. I took all the available pills – opiates, narcotics, everything. I tried it all.”
Since getting a SyqeAir inhaler, that has changed. “I just take the inhaler out of my purse, inhale, and go about my day – at work, or anywhere. I don’t experience psychoactive effects, and I don’t get stoned.”
Kamin says no other company has successfully created an inhaler that can administer precise and consistent doses of medical cannabis.
“The task of producing a cannabis inhaler that can provide uniform doses is a challenging one that involves expertise in several fields, including pharmacology, software and hardware engineering, and regulatory compliance,” she says.
The medical cannabis in the cartridge is from Dutch company Bedrocan, which grows it in sterile rooms under strict and controlled conditions with no human contact – ensuring that each batch is clinically standardized, just like any other pharmaceutical product.
To illustrate this, a rolled marijuana cigarette contains around one gram of cannabis. The SyqeAir inhaler, by comparison, contains 0.81 grams per cartridge of 60 VaporChips – less than 13.8mg per dose (until it is heated to 250mg – 1,000 mg).
The inhaler is equipped with a mechanism that doesn’t let the user continuously take doses, having to wait 10 minutes between each one. The cartridges are also tamperproof, and can’t be used without the inhaler.
Eventually, Kamin says that the SyqeAir inhaler will administer other kinds of medications to patients, as well as cannabis.
“Almost any medicine can fit into this inhaler,” she says. “Now it’s cannabis, but in the future it could be antibiotics.”
