MGC Pharmaceuticals (ASX:MXC), Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ) have partnered to create an international medical cannabis research hub.
The venture, called CannaHub, will initially focus on the treatment of cancer, researching the effectiveness of traditional and medicinal cannabis combination treatments and also drug delivery systems.
“CannaHub is designed to advance world leading research and push forward innovation within the medicinal cannabis pharmaceutical market,” said MGC Pharma’s Roby Zomer. “We look forward to working with the teams at RMIT and HUJ and delivering ground breaking results in the future”
While all outcomes, conclusions and intellectual property will be owned by CannaHub, anything developed could be of significant benefit to MGC Pharma as it has first dibs on using or acquiring anything generated by the venture that has potential commercial applications.
The firm says it is the first time RMIT or HUJ has partnered with a private company to form a research institute in the medicinal cannabis sector.
RMIT already has an existing partnership with MGC Pharmaceuticals involving collaboration on medical cannabis research initiatives in Australia. One of the core projects of the partnership is the development of a library of cannabis medicine. The pair also worked together on progressing MGC Pharma’s application to Australia’s Office of Drug Control (ODC) for a medicinal cannabis research cultivation licence.
The new collaboration will also be seeking other talent – research departments at other leading medical research universities and related industry bodies will be invited to join the CannaHub project and will gain access to what will be an international shared library of research, data and analytics. Incentives will be provided for joining, such as royalty payments and other funding opportunities.
News of the venture didn’t seem to create much of an impression on MXC shareholders, with its shares closing up less than 1% for the day yesterday.
It’s been a busy week for MGC Pharma – as we mentioned yesterday, last week the company announced it was selling off its cosmetics division MGC Derma and had also commenced legal action in relation to a contract involving MGC Derma over what it says was a breach of terms by another party.