VANCOUVER, BC Since March 16, 2020, the $9.5 billion iShares Biotech ETF has surged 37% as money flowed into companies developing solutions for COVID-19.
Meanwhile, the share price of big cap cannabis growers, Aurora Cannabis, Canopy Growth and Aphria are down an average of 70%.
“The divergence of the biotech and cannabis sectors has created buying opportunities in the cannabis biotech sector,” states Global Stocks News CEO, Guy Bennett.
On September 14, 2020 Willow BioSciences (WLLW.T) announced that Trevor Peters, President and CEO, will present live at Life Sciences Investor Forum on Thursday, September 17th.
On September 8, 2020 Willow announced that it will receive advisory services and conditional funding from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program.
Willow expects to be the first company to biosynthetically manufacture cannabinoids, using “a proprietary yeast strain laboratory process” to produce commercial quantities of CBD and CBG.
At its core, this is not ground breaking technology: Aspirin was created from the bark of a willow tree; insulin and penicillin are manufactured using biosynthetic methods; Heme that provides the meat taste in the Impossible Burger and is also biosynthetically produced in yeast.
On August 14, 2020 Willow Biosciences announced that it expedited its 500-litre pilot program to Q3 2020 from Q4 2020. The company expects to deliver samples of its first cannabinoid, cannabigerol (CBG), in Q3 of 2020.
CBG is the precursor to all cannabinoids and is commonly known as “The Mother of All Cannabinoids.”
Willow has filed multiple patent applications covering more than 200 novel genes designed to increase cannabinoid production and purity.
The FDA has already approved three synthetic cannabis-related drug products: Marinol (dronabinol), Syndros (dronabinol), and Cesamet (nabilone).
“We look upon this time as a watershed moment,” stated Dr. Chris Savile, Willow’s Chief Operating Officer (COO).
In North America, cannabis-based food and drink reached an estimated $1 billion in 2017. The cannabis edibles category could be worth more than $4.1 billion by 2022,” according to ArcView Market Research.
WLLW’s 35-person science and tech team have a collective 21 PhDs, while co-founding five companies which sold for an aggregate of $4 billion.
As of June 30, 2020, Willow has $12.2 million cash on hand.