Debra Borchardt
Nextleaf Solutions
Extraction technology company Nextleaf Solutions Ltd. (CSE: OILS) (OTCQB: OILFF) said that its common shares will begin trading today on the OTCQB Market. Nextleaf will trade on the OTCQB under the symbol “OILFF” and the company’s common shares will continue to trade on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol “OILS”. Nextleaf owns a portfolio of issued and pending patents pertaining to the company’s unique, industrial-scale process of extraction and purification of cannabinoids.
“We are excited to begin trading on the OTCQB which will improve liquidity and allow us to introduce Nextleaf – the first public company to be issued multiple U.S. patents for the industrial-scale extraction and purification of THC and CBD – to a broader audience of U.S. institutional and retail equity investors,” said Paul Pedersen, CEO and Co-founder of Nextleaf Solutions. “Listing in the United States on the OTCQB is an important step for Nextleaf as we build on our vision to revolutionize extraction and purification with superior throughput, yield, and purity to enhance cannabis oil economics across the globe.”
CannBioRx
Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) KBL Merger Corp. IV (NASDAQ: KBLM) signed a definitive agreement for the merger of a wholly-owned subsidiary of KBLM with CannBioRx Life Sciences Corp., a drug development company focused on treating inflammatory diseases. It began trading last Friday as a NASDAQ-listed cannabis biotech.
CannBioRx said in a statement that it has three synergistic programs that operate at the intersection of the biotech and cannabis industries:
- A clinical-stage program focused on the discovery and development of novel therapies to treat fibrosis. This fully enrolled Phase 2b program expects results in Dupuytren’s disease during the fourth quarter of 2020.
- A preclinical cannabinoid program focused on the development and commercialization of unique pharmaceutical-grade cannabinoids for arthritis, pain, diabetes, and obesity.
- A preclinical program developing innovative, orally available therapies harnessing the brain’s nicotinic receptors to treat inflammatory diseases, such as ulcerative colitis, gout, and multiple sclerosis.
“These three unique programs will enable us to efficiently target several key pathways in inflammation and capitalize on two decades of extensive scientific research on the relationship between cannabinoids and inflammation,” said Prof. Sir Marc Feldmann, Founder, and Co-Chairman of CannBioRx. “We believe that the use of synergistic combination therapies across our programs could be important for providing cost-effective healthcare in the future. We also believe that creating an entity and robust pipeline in each of its programs diversifies our risk. We are a global company comprised of senior scientists affiliated with Oxford, Stanford and Hebrew Universities. We intend to not only advance drug development and clinical trials for existing programs but also to identify new patent-protected compounds, including novel cannabinoids that expand our therapeutic impact in the industry.”
“Upon the completion of the transaction, we expect to be one of a limited number of NASDAQ-listed companies developing non-plant-touching, pharmaceutical-grade, non-psychoactive cannabinoids. These drugs are intended to provide safer, uniform dosing, according to regulatory agency standards,” added Dr. Marlene Krauss, CEO of KBLM, who will also assume the role of CEO of the combined company. “We believe that CannBioRx’s distinctive position is enhanced by the fact that the cannabinoid program is being developed in tandem with its other novel drug development programs that are also focused on inflammation. The programs range from pre-clinical programs to a program in a Phase 2b clinical trial. This could potentially provide us with a pipeline of drug candidates in sequential stages of development and addresses what we believe to be large untapped markets.”
