Cannabis company enjoys major growth
Cannabis company GW Pharmaceuticals is opening labs and offices at Histon on Friday, bringing 45 staff - and it expects to create a number of further jobs.
Cannabis company GW Pharmaceuticals is opening labs and offices at Histon on Friday, bringing 45 staff - and it expects to create a number of further jobs.
The Histon office, in Sovereign House on Vision Park, will be the centre for data from clinical trials, as GW extends its targets for treatment with cannabis.
GW was founded by Dr Geoffrey Guy in 1998 to develop cannabis as a medicine. The company now grows 30 tonnes of the drug a year in a secret location, and the medicine extracted from the plants is already being prescribed in the UK, in Europe and across the world to help patients with multiple sclerosis.
But the potential for Sativex, as the cannabis medicine is known, is much greater, and on-going trials will be targeting cancer pain, epilepsy, rheumatoid arthritis and, looking further ahead, schizophrenia.
Jim Paice, the Tory MP for South East Cambridgeshire, will open the 12,000 sq ft facility at Histon on Friday, where the 45-strong clinical research team will be co-ordinating global trials for Sativex, the first ever prescription cannabis-based medicine.
The company is also among the very few UK biotech firms to have conceived and developed through to approval a new prescription medicine.
Dr Guy, who once worked for Napp and who founded Phytopharm, told me during a recent interview for Cambridge Business magazine: "Most people in our industry said it was impossible to turn cannabis into a prescription medicine. We had to rewrite the rule book. We have the first approval of a plant extract drug in modern history. It has 420 molecules, whereas every other drug has just one."
GW is already turning over more than £30m and is in profit.
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk 24/1/2012
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