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Q. WERE YOU WORRIED ABOUT PUSHBACK, AND HAS THERE BEEN ANY BECAUSE OF THE SUBJECT MATTER?

Heth: Was there worry? Yes, actually. It was something we were concerned about; but we have been pleasantly surprised that we have not seen any negative reaction to it yet at all.

We were expecting at least some, and we were hoping it wouldn’t be much. But it has been less than I dared hope for.

So far, in fact, all the feedback that we’ve gotten has been positive.

Q. ZACH, WHERE ARE YOU FROM, AND HOW DID YOU WIND UP AT MINOT STATE?

Zachary Schuller: My family lives in Pennsylvania now, and I’ve lived around cities for most of my life. So when the time came for me to choose a college, I knew that I wanted to move to a place that was more rural. I wanted to see what that sort of life looks like. I also was interested in bioinformatics, because that field combines two areas – computer science and biological data, such as gene sequencing – that I had been interested in since high school.

Q. THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC HAS HIT NORTH DAKOTA HARD, BUT IT HAS HIT PENNSYLVANIA EVEN HARDER, I THINK. WAS THAT PART OF YOUR THINKING?

A.

Schuller: Yes. You can’t be in a room these days without somebody in that room being affected by the opioid epidemic. It’s a huge problem, so I’m very excited about directing my studies toward what might be a possible solution.

Q. WHAT KINDS OF MATERIALS WILL THE STUDENTS IN THE PROGRAM BE WORKING ON?

Heth: Our plan from the get-go was not to use any whole-leaf cannabis of any kind. We are not set up to use cannabis without a significant investment in infrastructure, including security.

Q. HOW DID YOUR INTEREST IN MEDICINAL PLANT CHEMISTRY DEVELOP?

So when I found that Minot State had both the degree and the college environment that I preferred, it was stellar. A.

Schuller: I actually was at the airport and saw a news story that Minot State was getting a new medicinal plant major. At the time, there had been a lot of news around the country about medical cannabis and the fact that it was becoming a big alternative medicine for a lot of currently prescribed conditions.

Those include a lot of the conditions that opioids are prescribed for.

And because the opioid epidemic is so destructive and medicinal cannabis might prove to be a safer solution, it was almost like I felt a social call. I’m a person who is interested in science and data, and this seems like a field in which those skills could offer a lot of help to a lot of people.

For example, if we had to guard wherever we had the stuff stored, or if we had to make sure that students wouldn’t pocket a little bit of the material and smuggle it out of class – we didn’t want to deal with any of that.

Luckily, the techniques and skills are similar regardless of whether we are talking about tea leaves, or hops, or the cannabis plant – and also industrial hemp. So, our task got much easier with the 2018 Farm Bill, which essentially legalized hemp. With hemp, we don’t need to go through all of those hoops, because we’re not dealing with an illegal substance that we need to keep as close tabs on. That makes things much easier. We can extract the cannabidiols out of hemp and separate the various other compounds in there, many of which are identical or nearly identical to those we find in a cannabis plant.

MORE ON: Page 48

MINOT STATE UNIVERSITY STUDENT ZACH SCHULLER (LEFT) AND ASSISTANT PROFESSOR CHRIS HETH PREPARE HOPS FLOWERS FOR EXTRACTION IN THE LABORATORY. IMAGE: MINOT STATE UNIVERSITY

For most commuters near New Town, ND, taking the HWY 23B bypass will save some time, but when Senior Transportation Engineer, Tim Arens, PE, designed this route, he was more concerned with saving lives.

Developed to relieve heavy truck traffic through town, this highway provides a safer route protecting motorists and pedestrians alike.

Tim’s passion is protection; for the residents of New Town and those in every community we serve.

To learn more about the New Town Northeast Truck Reliever Route, visit our website at www.ackerman-estvold.com/projects

ABOVE: PICTURED HERE IN THE LABORATORY IS ZACHARY SCHULLER, ONE OF MINOT STATE’S FIRST STUDENTS TO DECLARE A MAJOR IN MEDICINAL PLANT CHEMISTRY. IMAGE: MINOT STATE UNIVERSITY BELOW: CHRISTOPHER HETH, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY AT MINOT STATE UNIVERSITY, WORKS IN A LAB WITH STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY. HETH IS HELPING TO STEER MINOT STATE’S NEW PROGRAM IN MEDICINAL PLANT CHEMISTRY. IMAGE: MINOT STATE UNIVERSITY

Q. HOW DO YOU EXTRACT THOSE COMPOUNDS? WHAT’S THE BASIC TECHNIQUE?

A. A.

Heth: If you make coffee or tea, you’ve already done some of those processes, just with different solvents. When we brew coffee, we take the plant material and we run a solvent – hot water – through it. While the solvent is in contact with the plant, some of the compounds in the plant dissolve and are carried away from the bulk fiber material.

The concept is literally identical here. The only thing that changes is what we use for solvents.

Q. CHRIS, DO YOU EXPECT THE MEDICINAL CANNABIS INDUSTRY TO COME AND RECRUIT AT MINOT STATE ONE

OF THESE YEARS?

Heth: We’re certainly hoping so. The industry is in an odd state currently, because the federal prohibition still is in place. That’s in direct contradiction to what the states are doing; I believe the number is 31 states plus the District of Columbia that have legalized medicinal cannabis now.

But because it is still federally prohibited, we have 31 cases of redundancy, because you can’t transport it across state lines without breaking federal law.

In other words, each state needs to develop its own industry. And a lot of them have realized that having people who can understand the scientific basis behind the process is desirable.

So we think the need for trained scientists to perform the extraction and analysis tasks is going to keep growing.

Tom Dennis Editor, Prairie Business tdennis@gra.midco.net

701-780-1276