Toronto-based pharmaceutical company Ethicann Pharmaceuticals announced a development and commercial supply partnership with Ilera Therapeutics.

Ethicann was founded in 2018 as a pharma enterprise with a global focus by executives and investors with experience in the Canadian and U.S. pharmaceutical and Canadian cannabis industries. The company’s focus is the commercialization of cannabis-based ethical drugs that will be submitted for marketing approvals to Health Canada, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and other global pharma regulatory authorities. The company completed its initial financing earlier this year.

Ilera is part of the Ilera group of companies that are licensed growers/extractors of cannabis products in Pennsylvania and Louisiana, selling botanical cannabinoid oils and related products to medical marijuana dispensaries in each state.

Treatment

Ilera will develop and manufacture a highly purified botanical THC-based product that can be used by Ethicann to conduct a limited clinical study to support a market approval application that Ethicann will file initially in the U.S. for its CAN-001 product. Ethicann will then seek approvals in other global markets, using the same clinical data.

CAN-001 is a treatment for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV), which occurs in approximately 80% of the new 23.6 million cases of cancer annually worldwide.

The global market for treating CINV with THC is estimated at $2.66 billion.