Compounds found in cannabis, including cannabidiol (CBD), cannabigerolic acid (CBGA) and tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCV), may have potential as natural antifungal agents, according to a new computational study.

The study, published August 11 in ROCE: Jurnal Pertanian Terapan, was conducted by researchers at Politeknik Negeri Pontianak in Indonesia. Researchers examined cannabis-derived cannabinoids and flavonoids as potential biofungicides for controlling fungal diseases affecting oil palm plants.

Rather than testing the compounds directly against fungi in a laboratory, researchers used three in silico platforms — PASS Online, SwissADME and PKCSM — to predict antifungal activity, physicochemical properties, drug-likeness and potential toxicity.

The analysis found strong predicted antifungal activity among several cannabis compounds, particularly glycoside flavonoids and cannabinoids. Flavosativaside, orientin 7-glucoside and flavocannabiside produced the highest predicted probabilities of antifungal activity.

CBD, CBGA and THCV also showed considerable predicted antifungal potential. Researchers said the lipophilic nature of cannabinoids could help the compounds penetrate fungal cell membranes, a characteristic that may contribute to their activity.

The SwissADME analysis found that most of the compounds had favorable predicted physicochemical and pharmacokinetic characteristics, including acceptable lipophilicity, water solubility and bioavailability. Several cannabinoids and flavonoids also met commonly used drug-likeness criteria, while simpler flavonoids and cannabinoids generally showed a more favorable balance between polarity and membrane permeability than larger glycoside flavonoids.

Toxicity modeling found that most of the compounds were predicted to be non-mutagenic and non-hepatotoxic, although some compounds raised potential toxicity concerns requiring additional investigation. The environmental analysis generally predicted low to moderate ecological toxicity.

Researchers concluded that cannabis-derived compounds could represent promising candidates for the development of natural biofungicides, while emphasizing that the computational findings are preliminary and should be followed by laboratory and living-organism studies to determine whether the predicted effects translate into actual antifungal activity.