STENOCARE A/S (“Stenocare”), one of Europe’s Leading Medical Cannabis pharma companies is expanding into Canada together with North American Industry experts to lead its expansion efforts.
Stenocare is working to expand into Canada. With a population of 37 mill, Canada is a global leader in the legalization of cannabis for medical purposes, and other countries are seeing Canada as a reference for their own path toward the legalization of cannabis. Stenocare is now bringing its flagship suite of products to the Canadian market, which represents an annual revenue of approximately $5B (CDN). To support its market entry, Stenocare is working with a network of expert partners from the Canadian cannabis industry. The company is currently exploring different models and sales channels, and it aims to sign a commercial agreement in Q3 or Q4 2024.
Stenocare, a leading supplier of medical cannabis oil products based in Denmark, has since 2018 expanded into Sweden, Norway, the UK, Germany and Australia. The company has a strategy to enter up to ten markets by 2025, and Canada will be the seventh country for Stenocare.
Stenocare is partnering with a team of industry experts in Canada: Stenocare is one of the first European medical cannabis companies to enter Canada. In support of this growth strategy, the company has partnered with some of Canada’s leading medical cannabis innovators.
The team has previously led and delivered many industry-first innovations in the Canadian medical cannabis segment, which continue to benefit patients today:
- Patient Support Programs: Developing programs that provide patients with necessary information and support throughout their treatment journey.
- Claims and Insurance Reimbursement: Navigating the complexities of insurance claims to ensure that patients receive coverage for their treatments. This includes working closely with insurance carriers to streamline the reimbursement process.
- Paid Benefit Program Development: Creating programs that offer financial assistance to patients, making treatments more accessible.
- Medical Pre-Authorization Management: Handling the pre-authorization process required by insurance companies to approve specific treatments, ensuring timely patient access to medications.
- Establishing Inclusion Guidelines: Defining criteria for patient eligibility to ensure that those who can benefit the most from medical cannabis are identified and included in treatment programs.
- Development and Management of Disease-Specific Treatment Plans: Crafting tailored treatment plans that address the unique needs of patients with specific medical conditions, ensuring optimal therapeutic outcomes.
- Rigorous Product Profile Governance: Maintaining high standards of product quality and consistency through stringent governance practices, ensuring that every product meets regulatory requirements and patient safety standards.
This extensive experience and expertise make Stenocare’s team well-equipped to navigate the challenges of entering the Canadian market, ensuring that their innovative products are accessible to patients in need.
Innovative product ready ahead of plan: Stenocare is planning to introduce its innovative “Astrum” oil product in the Canadian market. The Canadian medical market has seen very little investment focused on patient and consumer-facing innovation, and this offers Stenocare an opportunity to become a leader with a patient-first approach to medication delivery. Since 2019, Stenocare has been investing with partners to develop and test next-generation medical cannabis oil products, positioning Stenocare as a true leader within prescription-based medical cannabis. The new product line is branded “Astrum,” and the company has worldwide exclusivity for this patented oil technology. The company is shortly commercializing its first Astrum 10-10 oil in Australia.
Innovative product: The Stenocare Astrum product is based on an innovative oil technology, that significantly improves the bioavailability in the patient’s blood. Thereby, the new product is addressing a well-known challenge with dosing medicine and securing consistent uptake of the active ingredients in the blood – which often leads to a lower treatment effect. With the Astrum product, Stenocare has completed a pharmacokinetic study in dogs that documented two important parameters in the lymphatic system that can improve the treatment effect:
Parameter 1 – uptake in the blood: According to the PK-study, Astrum improves uptake in the blood with a factor 2.6 – compared to a reference MCT-oil product in the market. Low and inconsistent uptake of the drug in the blood across patients is a well-known challenge in the pharma industry, that applies to most drugs. This also applies to medical cannabis. Today, when patients are administrating traditional MCT-oil based medical cannabis, the metabolism will reduce the uptake of cannabinoids in the body. This means that a highly variable and often little part of the active ingredients (ie. cannabinoids) are delivered inside the patient with a therapeutic effect. This is creating problems to prescribe a steady dosage of the drug to patients. Also, the uptake in the blood is very different for each individual due to biological differences between patients. The new Astrum product is mitigating these challenges and offering higher bioavailability.
Parameter 2 – time to max effect: According to the PK-study, the Stenocare Astrum product improves time from dosing to max effect from 2-4 hours to just 1 hour, and offer’s a more uniform experience. Predictability of uptake and time to max effect is important when doctors prescribe medical cannabis and when patients use it to treat their symptoms. The time to max effect is the duration of time it takes to reach maximum concentration of the drug in the blood after dosing the drug to the individual. Reaching the maximum as fast as possible is important to help patients manage their symptoms.
Thomas Skovlund Schnegelsberg, CEO of Stenocare comments: “We see Canada as an interesting opportunity for Stenocare and our innovative patented Astrum oil product. The Canadian market has had limited innovation within the medical cannabis space, and Stenocare has the potential to attract users that are in search of higher bioavailability with the product. With our local network of industry experts, we are currently exploring several interesting avenues for our entry into the Canadian market. We hope to enter into a commercial agreement with a local sales channel during 2H 2024”.
