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India Globalization Capital (IGC) is tackling one the country’s most costly diseases, Alzheimers Disease, the company has recently entered a definitive license agreement with the University of South Florida (USF). Under the agreement, IGC is the exclusive licensee of the U.S. patent filing entitled, THC as a Potential Therapeutic Agent for Alzheimer’s Disease.
We are favorable on IGC’s recent updates as it has pivoted fully into the biotech cannabis sector and will monitor how the market responds to this news. IGC acquired this patent to protect its proprietary formulation, IGC-AD1 which includes low-doses of THC and is intended to disrupt the buildup of amyloid beta plaques and alleviate several of the worst symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.
Recently we had the opportunity to to sit down with Dr. Chaunhai Cao of the USF Health Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute to get a deeper understanding of this development.
Thank you very much for your time today. First, can you please tell us about this patent as well as the study?
We began looking at the potential treatment of THC for Alzheimer’s disease in 2006, nearly eleven years ago. Our initial breakthrough results were published in 2014 and we’ve continued to conduct research on THC and cannabinoid since then. Essentially we have discovered a pathway by which theraputic low doses of THC prevent and even reverse the buildup of amyloid beta plaques around neurons (which is what occurs in Alzheimer’s and causes cognitive decline).
How long has your team being working on this study and have you found any exciting anecdotal evidence that you can tell our readers about?
The anecdotal results so far are the foundation on how low therapeutic dose of THC can treat AD and have been widely reported. For us what is exciting is trying to hold those anecdotal results in the news up to real scientific scrutiny. Our paper and subsequent papers like those published by the Salk Institute last year and the one published in Nature this year show, so far we’re on track to meeting the rigor that the FDA will require.
If this therapy is proven to be safe and effective for Alzheimer’s disease, can it be applied to other ailments?
Alzheimer’s is the granddaddy of all ailments, it’s the most expensive disease in America. So the important thing is for this product to really work for Alzheimer’s and is fairly safe for long term use. IGC is developing other products for other ailments, my focus is on the Alzheimer’s product.
Is the main function of this therapy providing a cure for Alzheimer’s or is it a preventative measure to slow the onset of the disease when diagnosed in the early stages?
Both. Published, scientific, mouse model results show success in both preventing and reducing amyloid-beta buildup. We think the treatment will be especially effective in early-stage cases, but good results in late stage Alzheimer’s are also possible.
In terms of addressable market how scalable is this treatment?
I’m not a market analyst, but from my work doing Alzheimer’s research and working with patients at the Byrd Institute for Alzheimer’s, I can say that it’s immensely scalable. I suspect that if it’s proven, upwards of 50% of AD patients could benefit from the treatment. I won’t go into the financials, but, I’m sure as the IGC team will explain, that makes for an astronomical potential.
Is there a drug out there right now that has similar effects on Alzheimers patients that is a synthetic therapy vs being cannabis derived?
Not even close. We believe that a drug for AD must meet the following three standards: 1. Can it address at least one major pathological protein such as Abeta or Tau 2. Is it proper for long term application and 3. Can it modulate age associated impairment of immune system. The existing Alzheimer’s treatments and potential products attempt to use very different biological pathways, that treat consequences of cell death rather than going after the initiator, which is plaque build-up. As is widely established, there’s nothing at all like a cure for Alzheimer’s available to patients.
Stay tuned for updates, IGC expects to share data that supports its formulation, the patent application, the transition to clinical trials, and details of its commercialization initiatives.
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