Marijuana firm aims to develop cannabis-based drugs for FDA approval

Written By Emily Gray Brosious

Vireo Health is working on marijuana-based drugs that can be FDA approved.

Vireo Health, a Minnesota company that also owns one of New York’s approved medical marijuana cultivation centers, is developing a “new class of cannabinoid-based drugs,” according to a report by Albany Business Review.

Vireo Health announced last week that it’s developing medicines based on tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD), two cannabinoid compounds found in marijuana.

Vireo Health is working with California-based Ligand Pharmaceuticals to use the company’s Captisol technology to help develop the new cannabinoid-based drugs, according to Times Union.
Per Times Union:

Captisol, is a patented agent that makes drug compounds more stable, easier to dissolve and potentially more efficient, according to Vireo CEO Kyle Kingsley.
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Vireo’s goal is to incorporate Captisol into cannabinoid-based medicines to create new, patent-protected, FDA-approved forms for the drugs, so they could potentially be taken by mouth, sprayed through the nose, put on the skin or nebulized.

“We now embark on our endeavors to bridge the gap between medical cannabis and traditional pharmaceuticals and become the first state-licensed company in the United States to develop proprietary FDA-approved cannabinoid-based medicines,” Kyle Kingsley, M.D. Chief Executive Officer of Vireo Health said in a news release.

Vireo Health seems confident about plans to eventually seek approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for these drugs.

“Our operations in state-regulated environments have helped us develop significant in-house expertise with pharmaceutical formulation technologies and we plan to leverage this knowledge in the FDA drug approval process,” Kingsley said.

FDA approval would allow the medications to qualify for prescription drug coverage, which currently is not granted to any marijuana-based medicines due to marijuana’s illegal federal status and a lack of FDA approval.