A medical marijuana company in the US has developed a new strain of cannabis that could lead to cheaper and more effective products for people suffering from seizures and inflammation. The company Minnesota Medical Solutions created a new type of cannabis that contains more cannabidiol (CBD), a compound used in medical products.

The company said on its announcement on Wednesday the new high-CBD strain is aimed to make its medical products easier and cheaper to refine. CBD currently appears in lower ratios in most marijuana strains.

A strain that contains more CBD promotes less work for the company to produce pills, oils or liquids. The Minnesota Medical Solutions or MinnMed named the new plant as “Katelyn Faith” after the eight-year-old Katelyn Faith Pauling who died earlier in 2015 with a severe seizure disorder.

The Katelyn Faith plant has already been tested by an outside laboratory, which confirmed the plant has a 34-to-one ratio of CBD to THC, another marijuana ingredient, according to the Minnesota Health Department. Most medical marijuana contains a mix of one to one, while another high CBD strain called Charlotte’s Web have a ratio of 20 to one.

“Our interdisciplinary team has discovered a plant that we believe to be the most CBD-rich in the world,” CBS Minnesota quoted MinnMed CEO Dr Kyle Kingsley. “The big winner here is going to be patients. This allows us to produce high CBD medications in a much more efficient manner.”

The medical cannabis programme of Minnesota has been facing high prices and sluggish enrolment since its launch in July. However, there could be changes in 2016 as the state is expanding the programme to pain patients, StarTribune reports.

Nevertheless, high-CBD oils and tinctures would remain as some of the most expensive treatments available in the state. Medical cannabis patients tend to pay about $200 (approx. AU$280) every month for a prescription, and in some cases more than $1,000 (approx. AU$1,400), based on the product and the dosage.

Kingsley said that MinnMed is aiming for the Katelyn Faith plant to reduce the costs of those products across the state, with prices expected to drop by about 10 per cent. The company, usually growing a dozen strains for production, is currently experimenting on hundreds of strain “in search of the next Katelyn Faith.”

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