FORMER PUEBLO RESIDENT DOES MARIJUANA PATCH RESEARCH

PUEBLO, Colo. - A former Pueblo resident who now works as a
researcher is concentrating on a three-year research project checking
out whether those patches used by people who are quitting smoking also
could give cancer patients a dose of the active ingredients in marijuana.

"This is a new area," said Audra Stinchcomb, who is working at the
Albany College of Pharmacy in Albany, N.Y., on a grant from the
American Cancer Society. "They haven't funded things like this before.
We're trying to determine the feasibility of making a transdermal
cannabinoid patch similar to the nicotine patch."

Marijuana's inhibiting effects on nausea, vomiting and lack of
appetite in cancer patients are well recognized, Ms. Stinchcomb said
recently, but how widespread its medical benefits are won't be known
until reliable dosage forms are devised.

"People are trying different routes of delivery. Society doesn't like
delivery by smoking. Besides, smoking isn't healthy and it's not
convenient anymore," she said. Other potential methods include
inhalers and nasal sprays.

But she said a patch "could be painless to apply and convenient to
use, especially since one patch may be able to deliver the drug for
several days," she said.

In the experiments, the marijuana derivative is put in a solution on
top of the skin to see how quickly it goes through.

"It has to be fast enough that a therapeutic level of the drug is
obtained in the body," she said. "We also want to know whether or not
the drugs break down in the skin into active or inactive
substances."

Besides its uses for cancer patients, marijuana might aid in the
treatment of glaucoma and multiple sclerosis, she said.

She is a 1984 graduate of South High School in Pueblo and the daughter
of Puebloans Don and Carol Stinchcomb.