- Forecasts envision medical cannabis market reaching $55.8 billion by 2025
- PVOTF filing patents for smoked, transdermal and mucosal delivery of therapeutics
- Global partnerships and acquisitions open windows of opportunity for company
With its recently announced plan to acquire Agro-Biotech, a Québec-based ACMPR Canadian licensed cannabis producer (http://nnw.fm/LeZ3q), Pivot Pharmaceuticals Inc. (CSE: PVOT) (OTCQB: PVOTF) has raised the bar in the race to capture part of the booming medical cannabis market, which is expected to reach over $55 billion by 2025. Agro-Biotech, which operates a fully-licensed indoor hydroponic cannabis production facility that’s able to turn out 10,000 kilograms per year, gives Pivot Pharmaceuticals a unique vertically-integrated position in the industry. Pivot is already known for its advanced patent-backed CBD therapy delivery options, and delivery technology has become a hot button in the burgeoning marijuana market.
Amid the flurry of activity surrounding the rush to provide medical marijuana therapies in markets where it is newly legalized, one lingering question regulators and industry insiders continue to grapple with is how to best administer cannabis to patients seeking relief from muscle spasms, pain, anxiety and other disorders. Pivot Pharmaceuticals is evaluating and preparing to market a variety of drug delivery technologies that can help the assimilation of cannabinoids for such human and veterinary patients.
Pivot has identified an area of need within the industry as efforts to provide clinical data for cannabis’s purported benefits strive to establish a scientific credence to what has been a largely word-of-mouth substantiation of the drug. Decades of recreational use, mostly in smoking marijuana, as well as historical research into cannabis’s ancient therapeutic uses, have given rise to the newly popular movement to establish clinical uses for the plant as governmental recognition has spread across the United States and Canada, as well as in some other countries across the globe.
As part of that movement, some companies are searching for alternatives to smoking the plant, not only to avoid the image of casual and medically unregulated recreational drug use but also out of concern for patients’ health and the interests of non-patients who may be offended by the smoke. Pivot has filed three provisional patents targeting different cannabinoid delivery methods. One anticipates inhalation for delivery of the therapeutics, another promotes transdermal passage through the skin using patches and creams, and a third prefers topical delivery through mucus in the buccal, nasal, vaginal and anal areas using a gel, mouthwash or suppository (http://nnw.fm/c28Ya).
The British Columbia, Canada-based company’s agreement with Germany’s Solmic Research GmbH has given Pivot worldwide rights to the Solmic Solubilisation technology underpinning a water-soluble oral solution that Pivot has made ready for market. A partnership with Israel’s Solubest Ltd. has resulted in a semi-solid cream that is currently in the stability evaluation phase of development, and Pivot’s anticipated February 28 closing on its option to acquire 100 percent of North Carolina’s Thrudermic, LLC has already led to the commencement of development of a product using Thrudermic’s transdermal nanotechnology for a systemic cannabidiol (CBD) product. Access to Israeli labs licensed to work with CBD and its more intoxicating cannabis sibling tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) gives Pivot an edge in research and development.
Pivot is also scheduled to close on its acquisition of California’s ERS Holdings, LLC on February 28, which has a patented ready-to-infuse cannabis (“RTIC”) oil-to-powder technology that Pivot expects to monetize by entering the cannabis-infused beverage market, particularly in the alcohol beverage industry, where Pivot has already identified potential partners as beverage companies battle the possibility of legal marijuana eating into beer sales (http://nnw.fm/rdWK5). The company also expects to use RTIC technology for wellness products such as over-the-counter sleep aids and cough medications.
As legalization has spread for cannabis’s medical applications, market forecasts have grown, and the therapeutic product derivatives of the plant are expected to fuel a $55.8 billion market by 2025, according to a 2017 report by Grand View Research (http://nnw.fm/X3ohq). Pivot’s first Solmic-enabled oral product, PGS-N001, is designed to provide relief to patients suffering from chemotherapy-induced vomiting, nausea, neutropenia and anemia — major side effects from cancer treatment that often lead to the premature discontinuation of the treatment. Of the 14 million new cancer diagnoses identified by the National Cancer Institute in 2012, about four million of them were expected to lead to chemotherapy treatment, and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (“CINV”) affects an estimated 70 to 80 percent of patients undergoing chemotherapy, according to Transparency Market Research (http://nnw.fm/8CzeJ), fueling a cancer supportive care products market that’s expected to reach $29.87 billion by 2021.
Pivot intends to register PGS-N001 as a natural health product for consumers and follow it with other products that will have a shorter development cycle as they follow the natural health product pathway.
“Solmic’s water-soluble technology has already been demonstrated in the nutraceutical and cosmeceutical markets in Europe,” Pivot CEO Patrick Frankham stated in a news release. “The addition of Solmic, our second disruptive drug delivery technology platform for cannabinoids, strengthens our business strategy to be a market leader in the development and commercialization of cannabinoid, cannabidiol (CBD), and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-based products.”
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.PivotPharma.com
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