#Cannabis and OTC
Medications Sector Snapshot-More Health Canada Approval with Rise of
Cannabis/Wellness Market (OTCQB: $INNV) (NASDAQ: $NEPT) (OTCQX: $WDDMF)
(NASDAQ: $KOOL)
Point Roberts WA,
Delta BC – June 19, 2019 - Investorideas.com, a leading investor
news resource covering biotechnology, pharmaceutical and cannabis stocks
releases a sector snapshot reporting on how, as the now legalized cannabis
industry has gained heavy traction federally with Health Canada approvals, this
potentially helps open the doors for other OTC medications and wellness
products.
Companies
featured include Innovus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (OTCQB: INNV), Neptune Wellness Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ: NEPT) (TSX: NEPT), WeedMD Inc. (TSXV:WMD) (OTCQX:WDDMF) and Cesca Therapeutics (NASDAQ: KOOL).
Innovus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (OTCQB: INNV), an emerging
commercial-stage pharmaceutical company that delivers safe, innovative and
effective over-the-counter medicine and consumer care products to improve men’s
and women's health and respiratory diseases, recently announced that it has
made significant progress on the regulatory and manufacturing steps needed to
obtain market authorization from Health Canada to commercialize its FlutiCare®
brand in Canada. The Company expects to secure the needed market authorization,
manufacturing and supply of the product from an existing Canadian manufacturer
during the second half of 2019, pending Health Canada approval. The product is expected to be available as an
over the counter drug (“OTC”) in that country and will not require a
prescription.
Read this in full at https://www.investorideas.com/news/2019/cannabis/06192OTCMedications-WellnessMarket.asp
“We are pleased to
announce progress relating to our plans to commercialize FlutiCare® in Canada
as this is will be our first international market for the product if approved
by Health Canada,” said Innovus Pharma CEO, Dr. Bassam Damaj. “In addition to
Canada, we are working with the regulatory bodies of several other countries to
assess the requirements needed to file for market authorization in those
countries.”
In addition to
FlutiCare®, the Company recently jointly announced with its former distribution
partner, Acerus Pharmaceuticals, Inc., (a Canadian company [“Acerus”]), that it
would be receiving back all the rights to its product UriVarx®, approved for
the relief of symptoms of overactive bladder and urine incontinency by Health
Canada. “Receiving the rights to the product back from Acerus, which allows
Innovus Pharma to fully commercialize it under our sales and marketing
platform, was the most logical step for us to take to ensure the full market
potential of UriVarx® in Canada. We
currently expect additional revenues of at least $1.5 million a year from the
sales of the product in Canada versus the $0.5 million recognized for the
previous year,” added Dr. Damaj.
“The Company
continues to assess the performance of its partners in Canada and around the
world and will continue to take steps to ensure that they perform to achieve
maximum sales potential of our products. To that effect, the Company will no
longer supply Apeaz® to Showcase, Inc., (a Canadian company), as the marketing
requirements through their platform as compared to the sales achieved by them
from this product were not satisfactory to Innovus Pharma. Under our sales and
marketing platform, Apeaz® is now our second-best performing product in Canada
that we sell directly there, after Diabasens® and is on track to achieve over
$2 million in revenues for 2019,” stated Dr. Damaj.
The Company has 13
products approved and commercialized in Canada including Zestra®, Zestra
Glide®, Uxor®, DiabaSens®, Vesele®, RecalMax®, UriVarx®, ProstaGorx®, BH
Testosterone®, AllerVarx®, Xyralid® Cream, Xyralid® Suppositories, and Apeaz®
and has filed or is in the process of filing for six additional products
including, FlutiCare®, PeVarx®, Healthifeet®, Breastlift®, ArthriVarx® and
CarvaNum™.
Neptune Wellness Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ: NEPT) (TSX: NEPT) recently announced that its wholly
owned subsidiary, 9354-7537 Quebec Inc. has received a notification letter from
Health Canada indicating that all requested license amendments have been
approved.
The scope of the
amendment received from Health Canada permits expansion of cannabis operation
areas to include an additional extraction room where Neptune will perform cold
ethanol extraction. Ethanol extraction is faster and more cost effective than
the CO2 extraction currently used and will increase Neptune's input
capacity from 30,000 kg to 200,000 kg.
The amendment from
Health Canada also includes expansion for an encapsulation room where Neptune
will produce cannabis oil capsules using the Licaps® technology licensed from
Lonza Group AG. The encapsulation equipment is commissioned and ready for
commercial operations with a capacity of up to 200 million capsules annually.
The Licaps® technology supports differentiated product offerings through its
various delivery systems, colors and branding possibilities. Furthermore, this
is an effective technology for variable and multiple product formulation runs.
Neptune's Board of
Directors recently approved an investment of $7 million to establish additional
formulation, manufacturing and packaging infrastructure. This investment will
allow Neptune to provide formulation services for new expected product forms
such as vape pens, topicals, beverages, sprays, and others. A $4 million
investment has also been approved, due to strong customer demand, to increase
extraction capacity to a total of 1,500,000 kg, under Neptune's Phase IIIA
expansion plans, targeted for completion before the end of calendar year 2019.
With this approval,
Neptune is now positioned to submit further license amendments to incorporate
the manufacturing of additional product forms, and packaging capabilities, as
well as for the Phase IIIA extraction capacity expansion.
Another Cannabis
company, WeedMD Inc. (TSXV:WMD) (OTCQX:WDDMF), a
federally-licensed producer and distributor of medical-grade cannabis who recently secured Health Canada
approval for 27 acres of low-cost, outdoor cultivation on its Strathroy,
Ontario property, recently announced that it is the first
licensed producer (LP) to be included in Shoppers Drug Mart and TruTrace
Technologies’ medical cannabis verification pilot project.
As recently announced
by Shoppers and TruTrace at The Second Annual World Cannabis Congress, the
Pilot Project is built on TruTrace’s proprietary StrainSecure™ platform, which
focuses on testing and verification to confirm the origin, authenticity and
quality assurance of cannabis products. Link here to read. WeedMD has been a
medical cannabis supplier to Shoppers since February 2019 and was the first
licensed producer to partner with TruTrace and utilize the StrainSecure™
platform to register its genetics in late 2018.
“We registered 40 of
our proprietary cannabis strains with TruTrace last October, recognizing the
importance of strain validation as cannabis products advance through the
medical and pharmaceutical channels,” said Keith Merker, CEO of WeedMD. “We’re
proud to be the first LP to be included in Shoppers and TruTrace’s recently
announced pilot project. Patients and their medical practitioners expect
traceability and origin assurance of their cannabis strains as it goes a long
way to building continued trust and accountability in our industry.”
ThermoGenesis Corp.,
a wholly owned subsidiary of Cesca
Therapeutics (NASDAQ: KOOL) and a market leader
in automated cellular processing recently announced that it has received
Health Canada approval of its next-generation AXP®II system for cord blood
processing.
The AXP® II, together
with the company's companion, single-use, cell separation set, provides
automated, rapid and reproducible harvesting of stem and progenitor cells from
collected units of umbilical cord blood in a "functionally-closed"
sterile system. The system, which received 510(k) market clearance from the US
Food & Drug Administration (FDA) in November 2018, is used by premier public
and private cord blood banks worldwide. It provides customers with upgraded
functionality, user interface and compatibility with newer operating systems,
and features an improved docking station and XpressTRAK® software to maintain
compliance with Current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) and Current Good
Tissue Practice (cGTP) regulations.
Haihong Zhu,
President of ThermoGenesis stated, "Health Canada's approval of the AXP®
II - following its approval of the PXP® System earlier this year - marks the
achievement of yet another key milestone and should allow us to meaningfully
expand our footprint with a best-in-class system that today continues to hold a
market-leading position. That said, we look forward to building on our customer
base by offering Cord Blood Banks throughout Canada with the ability to
undertake cord blood processing with a system that generates mononuclear cell
(MNC) recoveries of >90% and CD34+ stem and progenitor cell recoveries of
> 95%."
With the current
Canadian federal legalization of cannabis and the forthcoming expected
regulation updates due this October, both the pharmaceutical and wellness
sectors are taking notice and following some of the same paths towards approval
in the legal cannabis market. While this may be beneficial to those companies
in the cannabis, pharmaceutical and wellness sectors, the real winner will be
the Canadian consumer, who will no longer be cornered into having only one option
as their medical/health treatment.
Investorideas.com has
created a directory of publicly traded cannabis and biotech companies to
research as part of its membership. Learn more at https://www.investorideas.com/membership/
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