Federally-licensed Jamaican medical cannabis specialist brings a scientific focus

is devoted to the ‘true science of medical cannabis’, according to the chairman and chief executive, Dr Stephen Barnhill, a veteran of the life sciences industry turned pioneer of this new area of drug development.

His company is ‘fully vertically licensed’ in Jamaica, which means it has federal sign-off for everything from cultivation to extraction and production.

Crucially, it has a research & development (R&D) licence that has allowed it to clinically formulate treatments for patients at its facility on the island.

While Barnhill’s initial interest was to assess the use of cannabis in cancer, the remit has broadened to include ulcerative colitis, opioid addiction, anxiety, and chronic pain. 

The wide-ranging licensing permissions have been baked in partly because of Apollon’s first-mover status.

But they owe as much to the fact Barnhill and his colleagues also forged an early and very close relationship with doctors and academics at the University of the West Indies.

Top medical and scientific team

It’s fair to say that Apollon has shown its commitment by hiring a medical, scientific and advisory team that wouldn’t look out of place in a teaching hospital.

The strategy is very simple: the company grows and extracts active cannabis ingredients including the psychoactive THC, ushers it through the R&D process to provide medically supervised, personalised treatments.

Apollon also has a number of retail products sold through its dispensaries.

The aim throughout the process is to provide a consistent medicinal formulation for anything it creates, which means its output could be exported.

The opportunity then exists to license its cannabis formulations to healthcare partners that have the potential to be able to commercialise them.

Ultimately, it hopes the huge tracts of real-world clinical data it is compiling daily will pave the way for potential future partnerships with Big Pharma.

“We are in the unique position that we treat patients, collect the data on that treatment,” says Barnhill.

“Because we have a full medical staff, we also do the laboratory work for follow-up on these patients; the x-ray work; it is a medical facility where patients can get full care but also be treated with medical cannabis including THC.”

THC critical component of medical cannabis

That THC part is important, as is the fact Apollon is federally licensed to work with it in Jamaica.

Many cannabis companies tend to focus on the cannabinoid, or CBD element because it is incredibly difficult to win government approval to grow plants with the psychoactive element.

Here in the UK, for example, only two THC cultivation licences have been issued in the last 20 years.

Yet as Barnhill points out: “THC is a critical component of medical cannabis.”

In February, it was announced that Apollon would reverse into Afriag Global () to allow it to list on the Aquis Stock Exchange, raising £2.5mln in the process.

The general meeting to approve this transaction takes place on April 12.

Entrepreneur David Lenigas and his cohort will be coming off the Afriag board to be replaced by Stephen and Nicholas Barnhill, Kevin Sheil and Nicholas Ingrassia.

Stene Jacobs, the company’s head of business development, says the reverse takeover (RTO) and relisting cut all ties with the previous management.

Third-party agreements

Going forward, the company is looking at potential “third-party sales agreements” for Apollon products in countries such as South Africa and Greece, says Jacobs.

Corporate developments may include ‘up listing’ here in the UK and taking a stock market quote in the US, most likely on the OTC QB.

Jacobs says the company has news flow “coming thick and fast” after the RTO.

The market conditions, meanwhile, couldn’t be better. Shares in companies involved in both medical cannabis and CBD have been in huge demand as the London listings of Cellular Goods, MGC Pharma and Kanabo have…