Vireo Health, which holds licenses to produce and sell medical cannabis in Minnesota and New York, is focused on integrating standard medical, scientific, and operational practices into the medical cannabis industry, improving the quality, safety and affordability of cannabis-based medicines for its patients. The company recently announced its plans to license technology from Ligand Pharmaceuticals and to pursue FDA approval for its pain medication.
As an emergency room doctor, Kyle Kingsley felt frustration at seeing the drug-addicted patients return to his ER over and over, trying to find a doctor who would prescribe them more opioid painkillers.
Those pain pills cause twice as many deaths in Minnesota as street heroin, even though both are made from same plant, the poppy. Now Kingsley is hoping to use a different plant — cannabis — to divert pain patients from opioids to marijuana drugs. But the ambitious plan will require approval from one of the toughest bureaucracies on the planet: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
We hope that Captisol will enable these medications to be more effective, and it will allow us to pursue proprietary drug pathways with these medicines.
Kyle Kingsley, CEO of Vireo Health
We are very excited about this possibility. It could change pain medicine as we know it.
Read Joe Carlson’s “Medical marijuana maker Vireo Health sets its sights on FDA”: http://www.startribune.com/medical-marijuana-maker-vireo-health-sets-its-sights-on-fda/360649941/
