Heritage Cannabis Holdings Corp. (CSE:CANN, OTCQX:HERTF) said it has entered into an exclusive intellectual property licensing and royalty agreement with Avicanna Inc. (TSX:AVCN), a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development, manufacturing, and commercialization of plant-derived cannabinoid-based products.
The licensing agreement is for the commercialization of a number of Avicanna’s advanced CBD-based topical products under Heritage’s medical cannabis brands targeting patients registered to purchase medical cannabis in Canada.
The branded products include Avicanna’s proprietary cannabinoid topical formulations developed through years of extensive research by Avicanna’s team of scientists. The specific products are all supported with pre-clinical studies in addition to two of the SKUs that are supported by completed human studies. They are planned to launch by Q4 2021 through Heritage’s extensive medical sales channels in Canada and aim to address unmet medical needs of the mass market with evidence-based and standardized cannabinoid products.
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Under the licensing agreement, which has an initial three-year term, Avicanna has exclusively licensed, subject to certain conditions and exceptions, the use of certain proprietary product formulations to Heritage to be marketed and sold under Heritage’s medical Opticann branded products in non-competing medical channels in Canada. Heritage is required to meet certain minimum sales requirements every year for each branded product licensed under the agreement and will pay Avicanna a royalty for each product sold to its medical consumers.
In a statement, Umar Syed, president of Heritage’s medical division said: "We are excited to add Avicanna’s innovative topical products to our portfolio of highly effective medical CBD products. They are a great strategic fit."
"We are very impressed with Avicanna’s diligent R&D approach for developing highly effective topical products formulated with pharmaceutical technology and which are supported with evidence of efficacy, much like the existing Opticann portfolio that includes oral products that use the patented VESIsorb technology and sublingual CBD filmstrips that use the patented Versafilm® technology. The Licensing Agreement offers Heritage speed-to-market with highly effective topicals and we see this as the beginning of a highly successful commercial partnership,” he added.
Avicanna is a diversified and vertically integrated Canadian biopharmaceutical company focused on the research, development and commercialization of plant-derived cannabinoid-based products for the global consumer, medical, and pharmaceutical market segments. Itis an established leader in cannabinoid research and development, which it primarily conducts at its R&D headquarters in the Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) Innovation Centre, JLABS Toronto, Canada and in collaboration with leading Canadian academic and medical institutions. In addition to its developing pharmaceutical pipeline, Avicanna’s team of experts have developed and commercialized several industry leading product lines,
“We look forward to collaborating with the Heritage team to extend our proprietary and evidence-based topical formulations to more Canadian patients and expand into more medical channels nationwide. We believe that the alignment of both companies to offer the highest standards for cannabinoid-based medicine and education will yield fruitful and long-term commercial success,” said Aras Azadian, CEO of Avicanna.
Heritage is a leading cannabis company offering innovative products to both the medical and recreational legal cannabis markets in Canada and the US operating under two licensed manufacturing facilities in Canada. The company has an extensive portfolio of high-quality cannabis products under the brands Purefarma, Pura Vida, RAD, Premium 5, feelgood., CB4 and ArthroCBD.
Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com