Fired UA marijuana researcher's team secures nod for Colorado grant

• Colorado gives preliminary approval of a $2 million grant to study veterans with PTSD. Dr. Sue Sisley, ousted from the UA earlier this year, will seek a new Arizona home for the project.
• A revised plan will split the study in two locations. Half of the 76 participating veterans will get strains of marijuana at a yet-to-be-determined location in Arizona. The other group will be studied at Johns Hopkins University.

After her research team secured preliminary approval this week for a $2 million grant from the state of Colorado to study how marijuana affects veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, a metro Phoenix doctor said she no longer needs an Arizona university to house the study.

Sue Sisley was ousted from her University of Arizona position earlier this year for what she believes were political reasons after she clashed with state lawmakers over medical-marijuana research. Northern Arizona University refused to hire her, and Arizona State University has not said whether it will offer a position.

But Sisley said that Colorado's decision to fund her marijuana study allows her to pursue the study even without an Arizona university lab.

"That's the beauty of this grant," Sisley said in an e-mail. "The Colorado health department believed in the quality of this research regardless of whether I was aligned with an Arizona university or not."

Sisley said a revised plan will split the study in two locations. Half of the 76 participating veterans will get marijuana at a yet-to-be-determined location in Arizona. The other group will be studied at Johns Hopkins University. Ryan Vandrey, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine's behavioral pharmacology research unit, will coordinate the Johns Hopkins half of the study.

Colorado's grant lists Marcel O. Bonn-Miller, of the University of Pennsylvania and Department of Veterans Affairs' National Center for PTSD, as the primary investigator who will coordinate and oversee both sites. Santa Cruz, Calif.-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies is the organization that will receive the grant.

Sisley wants to keep her part of the research project in Arizona because she said she's commited to local veterans suffering PTSD. She said a private donor has offered her free lab space in north Scottsdale, and she may seek an academic appointment at an out-of-state university while conducting the research in Arizona.

Sisley said she has not heard whether ASU will offer her a position. An ASU spokesman said that the university is still considering whether to offer a position.

UA officials have not publicly discussed why Sisley's contract was not renewed this year, but the university released a letter that it sent Sisley about the contract termination. The letter cited changes to the university's telemedicine program and a completed contract with the Arizona Department of Health Services as two factors. Her associate faculty appointment was an unpaid position.

Sisley believes her contract termination was the result of political pressure after she was connected to a short-lived recall attempt of Arizona Sen. Kimberly Yee, who killed a bill that could have funded research with fees collected from the state's medical-marijuana program.

Sisley said Colorado's endorsement of the PTSD study is "a true vindication of its scientific merits, and further highlights how shameful it is that no Arizona university is willing to embrace this crucial research."

The Colorado award is one of eight grants totaling $7.6 million recommended this week by Colorado's medical marijuana scientific advisory council for study of diseases such as Parkinson's, pediatric epilepsy and inflammatory bowel disease. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment's health board will decide Dec. 17 board meeting whether to approve the grants.

Ken Gershman, a manager with Colorado's medical marijuana research grant program, said that the advisory council was aware that Sisley is no longer affiliated with an Arizona university but that did not affect the decision.

"It was not a factor that got in the way," Gershman said. "The advisory council was impressed with the eight that we chose to recommend."

Vandrey, of Johns Hopkins University, said the study will evaluate four types of smoked marijuana give to veterans with PTSD. He said the study will vary the amount of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, that veterans receive, with the goal of evaluating harm or benefit. All participating veterans will get marijuana, with the group receiving lower doses of THC serving as a placebo.

"I am not an advocate for or against marijuana," Vandrey said. "I am a scientist who is looking to (gather) the evidence."