GW Pharmaceuticals
Clinical Trials
Botanical Drugs
Licensed & Active
Human CBG
Clinical Trial
Peer-Reviewed
Publications
Lecturer in 44 Countries
Cannabis can do more than the world currently allows it to do. That gap — between what the science shows is possible and what patients are actually getting — is what keeps us working.
CReDO Science was born from two complementary experiences: a physician and researcher who had spent decades advancing cannabinoid science and developing botanical medicines, and a business leader whose personal experience had led her to become an educator, advocate, and translator of that science. In 2020, Dr. Russo and Nishi Whiteley joined forces to create CReDO Science.
Both arrived at the same conclusion from different directions: the cannabis plant has far more potential to serve humanity than the industry was then — or is now — fully realizing. CReDO Science was created to help close that gap. Its purpose is to take rigorous science beyond the laboratory and the clinic — to discover, validate, translate, educate, and ultimately deliver better applications of cannabis and botanical medicine. The goal is simple, even if the work is not.
Ethan left private neurology practice after two decades because he could see the ceiling. There were only so many patients he could help in a clinic in Montana. He had watched cannabis provide real relief where conventional medicine had failed — for people he cared about, not just patients in the abstract — and he was frustrated by the absence of rigorous science to guide its use, by products that could have been formulated to work but didn’t, and by an industry that too often prioritized speed and margin over outcomes. He believed the way to help more people was to go upstream: to build the science, develop the medicines, and train the people who would carry it forward.
Nishi arrived at the same conclusion through the same kind of love. After watching her mother find relief at the end of her life, she walked away from a growing consulting practice and spent five years building the scientific literacy to do this work properly — because she believed that what had helped her mother should reach everyone who needed it, grounded not in anecdote but in evidence. There are not enough hours in either of their days to help every patient, every clinician, every caregiver who reaches out. But by developing better medicines, publishing rigorous research, and educating the professionals who touch patients every day, the reach multiplies. That is the logic behind everything CReDO does.
The drug development work, the research, the education — they are not separate lines of business. They are three expressions of a single mission: to make cannabis safer and better, so that people who are suffering can get the relief they deserve and live — and die — better.
We are frustrated by the mediocre. We are impatient with the ill-informed. And we are in this for the long haul, because the people who need this done right cannot afford for us not to be.
This work honors the people they love. And it is built to help everyone.
There is a short answer and a long answer to the question of who Ethan Russo is.
The short answer: he is the researcher other cannabis researchers call when they have a hard question.
The long answer starts in Missoula, Montana, where Dr. Russo practiced as a clinical neurologist for twenty years — building deep expertise in chronic pain, and an early conviction that cannabis had a legitimate role in medicine long before that view was widely held. It continues through a three-month ethnobotanical research sabbatical with the Machiguenga people in the Peruvian Amazon, where he studied traditional plant medicine firsthand.
And it runs through sixteen years at GW Pharmaceuticals — five as consultant, eleven as Senior Medical Advisor — where he served as Medical Monitor, Pharmacovigilance Officer, and Study Physician across more than twenty Phase I–III clinical trials for Sativex® and Epidiolex®, the only two regulatory-approved cannabis-based pharmaceuticals ever brought to market.
That body of work — spanning neurology, psychopharmacology, ethnobotany, and clinical trial design — is what CReDO Science is built on.
Dr. Russo is a board-certified neurologist and psychopharmacology researcher. He held faculty appointments at the University of Montana in Pharmaceutical Sciences and the University of Washington in Medicine, and has served as visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Harvard University, and Johns Hopkins University. He is a member of the US Pharmacopoeia Panel on Cannabinoids, Past-President of the International Cannabinoid Research Society, and former Chairman of the International Association for Cannabinoid Medicines. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the American Botanical Council.
He is the author of more than seventy peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and seven books — including the Handbook of Psychotropic Herbs and Handbook of Cannabis Therapeutics: From Bench to Bedside — and has lectured or consulted in 4244 US states, six Canadian provinces, and 44 countries on six continents.
His current research priorities include phytocannabinoid and terpenoid interactions, the genetic basis of Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome, and the clinical applications of cannabigerol — a body of work reflected in CReDO's active research programs and peer-reviewed publications.
He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Massachusetts Medical School, with residencies in Pediatrics in Phoenix and in Child and Adult Neurology at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Author, Botanical Medicine for Women's Health; Co-Editor, American Herbal Pharmacopoeia Cannabis Monograph
Head, Medicinal Chemistry Lab; President, Multidisciplinary Center for Cannabinoid Research, Hebrew University Jerusalem. Dr. Mechoulam — the scientist who first isolated THC and CBD, and one of the founding figures of cannabinoid science — was Ethan's mentor, colleague, and dear friend. His confidence in Ethan's work was among the highest honors of his career.
Nishi Whiteley came to cannabis medicine the way many people do — through someone she loved.
When her mother was dying of lung cancer, cannabis provided real relief in the final chapter of her life. That experience didn't make Nishi an advocate in the traditional sense. It made her want to understand — rigorously, scientifically — how and why it worked, and how to make that knowledge accessible to the clinicians, patients, and caregivers who needed it most.
So, she made a decision that most people wouldn't.
She walked away from a thriving business development consultancy — the kind of career most people spend decades building — and gave herself five years to immerse herself completely in the medical research. She read everything. She tracked down the science. And at the end of those five years, she had written Chronic Relief: A Guide to Cannabis for the Terminally & Chronically Ill — a patient-facing book grounded in more than 300 scientific references, with a foreword by Dr. Russo. It took five years because she refused to publish it until it was right. She wanted it to be a resource that would last, not a book that would date. It has.
That same standard — thorough, uncompromising, driven by love for the people this work is meant to help — runs through everything she does at CReDO.
She is a peer-reviewed co-author alongside Dr. Russo on four scientific publications, including serving as lead author of Cannabidiol: A Race to Relief, published in the American Botanical Council journal, HerbalGram. She curates MyChronicRelief.com, an evidence-based cannabis information resource for patients and caregivers, and has contributed science writing to ProjectCBD, one of the most respected cannabis information platforms in the world.
Nishi's role at CReDO is as the commercial architect of everything the company does. She brings thirty-five years of international business development experience to the work of turning world-class science into licensed drugs, commercial partnerships, and professional education. She manages Dr. Russo's IP portfolio, negotiates every licensing and joint venture agreement, and oversees the operations that keep CReDO's programs moving. Before co-founding CReDO, she served as Director of Americas Business Development at the International Cannabis and Cannabinoids Institute in Prague — where she helped build one of the first full-service clinical cannabis drug development programs in the world. Before that, she led the International Marketing Program at the Texas Department of Agriculture, originated and managed $750,000 in USDA micro-grants that generated more than $25 million annually in traceable export sales for small businesses, and has worked on investment and development projects in more than ten countries — including direct engagement with heads of state in Cuba, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic.
She holds a Master of Agriculture from Texas A&M University and a Bachelor of Science from Tarleton State University, and is a graduate of the Texas Agricultural Lifetime Leadership program.
CReDO is intentionally lean.
Rather than maintaining a large standing staff, CReDO assembles the right expertise for each engagement. Our extended network includes veteran researchers, clinicians, and regulatory specialists — including alums of GW Pharmaceuticals, the organization that brought Sativex® and Epidiolex® to market. They are brought in on a project basis, contributing targeted expertise precisely when and where it's needed.
This model means that every engagement is staffed with senior people who have done this before. There are no junior researchers learning on your program. There is no overhead you're paying for that isn't directly relevant to your work.
It is, in our view, the only way to do this kind of science-led consulting well.
Founder, Healer.com
Associate Research Director, Santé Cannabis
Emeritus Professor, Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Aberdeen
Whether you're exploring a drug development partnership, looking for formulation expertise, or interested in MM411, we'd like to hear from you.
