The Science of CBD: Exploring Safe Limits | Online seminar

Ruth Willis is the New Foods and Food Innovation Risk Assessment Team Leader at the Food Standards Agency in the UK. She has a degree in biological sciences and has worked in a range of scientific and regulatory roles within the UK government since 2004. Over the past eight years, she has specialized in assessing and regulating the risk of novel foods, which includes considering CBD as a new food. Ruth is Technical Secretary of the UK Novel Foods and Processes Advisory Committee. Since 2018, she has led teams developing the UK’s capacity to take forward the assessment of regulated products, such as novel foods, post-EU exit. Most recently, she led the team that developed the UK’s provisional acceptable daily intake of 98% or more new CBD foods and the UK’s first safety assessments for CBD.

Stephen has been at the University of Nottingham, in the United Kingdom, since 1988 and, for around 30 years, has worked on cannabis-related medicines. He collaborates with colleagues across diverse disease foci, although he predominantly works on cellular and molecular models. Stephen studies signaling at cannabinoid and cannabinoid-related receptors and enzymes associated with the endocannabinoid system. He also develops assays to measure these activities ex vivo as well as for high-throughput screening. Stephen was elected president of the International Society for Cannabinoid Research in 2015 and continues to be a member of the board of directors. He also provided specialist knowledge for consideration of changes to UK drug policy, particularly associated with cannabis preparations.