Pot ‘Poster Child’ Eyes March Rollout for Alzheimer's Product

(Bloomberg) -- As Canada today becomes the second country to fully legalize the recreational use of marijuana, the “poster child of a cannabis bubble” sees big opportunity ahead.

“Today was monumental,” India Globalization Capital’s Chief Executive Officer Ram Mukunda said in an interview. But the company is looking ahead to March, when it hopes to get its low-dose THC-based formulation for Alzheimer’s disease to the Canadian market.

“We were waiting for it to become legal,” Mukunda said in a phone interview. “We’re going to go to Canada and try to figure out how to apply to the health department in a few months.”

IGC, which turned heads in 2013 when it added a cannabis pharmaceuticals business to its existing infrastructure legacy, has applications pending for eight patents, with its Hyalolex formulation for Alzheimer’s its leading candidate. Its pharmaceutical products are based on a low-THC formulation, which has been shown to offer benefits like higher energy while slowing the build up of plaque in brains, a key characteristic in Alzheimer’s patients.

Bethesda, Maryland-based IGC’s stock has gained more than 300 percent this year -- and much of that rally only started in September, when it talked about entering the cannabis-infused drinks space with a line of branded hemp or CBD-infused version of an energy drink called “Nitro G.”

The company took advantage of the surge to raise $30 million in funding. But for the past five years, Mukunda says the company has been operating on an about $2 million budget. The company on Wednesday reported $811,000 in revenue for the three months ended Sept. 30, all attributable to its legacy infrastructure business operations.

“We’ve come a long way and we’ve got very, very important products on our hands despite having next to no cash,” Mukunda said. “We have an opportunity to be a market-mover in the low-dose space.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Janine Wolf in New York at jwolf71@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Courtney Dentch at cdentch1@bloomberg.net, Richard Richtmyer

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