A Metabolomic Approach Applied to a Liquid Chromatography Coupled to High‐Resolution Tandem Mass Spectrometry Method (HPLC‐ESI‐HRMS/MS): Towards the Comprehensive Evaluation of the Chemical Composition of Cannabis Medicinal Extracts

Introduction Cannabis sativa L. is a powerful medicinal plant and its use has recently increased for the treatment of several pathologies. Nonetheless, side effects, like dizziness and hallucinations, and long‐term effects concerning memory and cognition, can occur. Most alarming is the lack of a standardised procedure to extract medicinal cannabis. Indeed, each galenical preparation has an unknown chemical composition in terms of cannabinoids and other active principles that depends on the extraction procedure. Objective This study aims to highlight the main differences in the chemical composition of Bediol® extracts when the extraction is carried out with either ethyl alcohol or olive oil for various times (0, 60, 120 and 180 min for ethyl alcohol, and 0, 60, 90 and 120 min for olive oil). Methodology. Cannabis medicinal extracts (CMEs) were analysed by liquid chromatography coupled to high‐resolution tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) using an untargeted metabolomics approach. The data sets were processed by unsupervised multivariate analysis. Results Our results suggested that the main difference lies in the ratio of acid to decarboxylated cannabinoids, which dramatically influences the pharmacological activity of CMEs. Minor cannabinoids, alkaloids, and amino acids contributing to this difference are also discussed. The main cannabinoids were quantified in each extract applying a recently validated LC–MS and LC‐UV method. Conclusions Notwithstanding the use of a standardised starting plant material, great changes are caused by different extraction procedures. The metabolomics approach is a useful tool for the evaluation of the chemical composition of cannabis extracts. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Untargeted metabolomics was successfully applied to unveil the main differences between cannabis based medicinal extracts obtained using two different solvents and four extraction time points for each solvent. A series of cannabinoids and other relevant small molecules, including alkaloids and amino acids, were identified among the most discriminating metabolites. Our results suggested that the main difference lies in the ratio of acid to decarboxylated cannabinoids, which dramatically influences the pharmacological activity of CMEs.