2026 Discovery Award Nominee: Melani Kane, PharmD

Melani Kane, PharmD, developed the Cannabinoid Experience Rating Scale (CbERS) to bring more structure to one of the hardest parts of medical cannabis care: determining why a patient is not getting the expected benefit or is experiencing unwanted effects.

Cannabinoid treatment can involve dose, THC-to-CBD ratio, timing, formulation, route of administration, administration technique, and product-specific differences. Without a consistent framework for evaluating those variables, persistent symptoms can lead to repeated trial and error or automatic dose escalation, while adverse effects may be attributed to cannabis generally even when a modifiable part of the regimen is responsible.

CbERS organizes those variables into a clinical decision framework intended to help healthcare professionals identify which component of therapy may need adjustment. Rather than treating inadequate benefit or adverse effects as a single problem, the framework creates a more systematic way to examine whether the issue involves dose, cannabinoid ratio, timing, formulation, administration, or another treatment variable.

The goal is not to eliminate individualized care, but to make that individualization more deliberate. A structured assessment can help clinicians make more targeted adjustments while reducing unnecessary exposure to regimens that are ineffective or poorly tolerated.

That approach also brings familiar medication-safety principles into an area of care where clinicians and patients have often had to rely heavily on individualized experimentation. If cannabinoid medicine is to mature clinically, it will need assessment tools comparable to the structured methods used elsewhere in medication management.

Work on CbERS is now moving toward expert consensus, reliability testing, and prospective validation. Kane is developing a modified Delphi consensus process involving experts in cannabinoid science and clinical practice, with subsequent research intended to evaluate the framework’s reliability and clinical utility.

The research asks an important question for the future of cannabinoid medicine: Can individualized cannabis care become more systematic without losing the flexibility individual patients require? Rather than searching for a universal cannabis dose, CbERS provides a testable framework for understanding why a particular treatment experience may need to change.

The Discovery Award recognizes research that turns unresolved clinical questions into problems that can be systematically evaluated and studied. Kane’s work with CbERS is helping transform the often subjective process of cannabis treatment adjustment into a clinical framework designed to improve safety, consistency, and therapeutic decision-making.

Learn more about Melani Kane's research: International Society of Cannabis Pharmacists

Cast your vote for Melani Kane for the 2026 Discovery Award.

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