With three labs run by 35 seasoned scientists in Canada and the United States, Willow Biosciences began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange in December 2019. The biotechnology company makes small amounts of biosynthetic cannabidiol (CBD) from yeast and aims to ramp up production to commercial scale by the end of 2021, with revenue expected to start flowing in early 2022. Several other cannabinoids are on the lab’s to-do list as clinical trials are expected to reveal benefits and spur demand for many other molecules found in the cannabis plant.
Trevor Peters, CEO of Willow Biosciences
The cost of Willow’s biosynthetic CBD, which will be sold as a wholesale ingredient, is expected to be 70 per cent to 90 per cent below the cost of CBD that has been extracted from the cannabis plant and purified.
In June 2019, the Calgary-based company partnered with U.S.-based Noramco Inc. one of the world’s biggest producers of synthetic biocannabinoid active pharmaceutical ingredients, in a joint development agreement to produce and distribute CBD.
The conversation with Trevor Peters, Willow Bioscience’s president and CEO, has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Cannabis Professional: Why does Willow focus its product development on cannabinoids only?
Trevor Peters: Within the opium poppy, we have three APIs [active pharmaceutical ingredients] whereas in cannabis you’ve got potentially dozens of molecules that should find their way into the API category. We think that the cannabis plant is going to produce numerous molecules of interest, new drug potential that will range beyond one limitation. Opium treats pain and that’s it. But the cannabis plant, we’ve already seen one API come out of it in the last couple of years for[anti-seizure medication] Epidiolex and there are probably at least six others that are in clinical trials. They’re not just for pain management or brain disorders, they’re there against a wide range of implications. That’s what’s exciting to us, there’s more than one use. It’s not addictive. Cannabis does not produce molecules that present addictive properties.
Instruments such as the colony picker depicted above allow Willow Biosciences Inc. to design, build and test constantly improving, proprietary yeast strains.
CP: Why are you focusing on CBD now rather than other compounds?
TP: The market size is enormous. Strictly from a business perspective, the costs today through plant manufacturing are high. We’ve seen the challenges in the industry around cultivation, harvesting, extraction. We see a real big segment for Willow to be able to produce CBD, in particular this is our first target, to be able to produce a highly pure product at scale that will have a very competitive cost associated with it.
We know there’s a market for CBD, which is why we’re so focused on producing CBDA [cannabidiolic acid]. It has a very broad market today for health benefits primarily so it reaches a large population. From a commercial perspective, it just makes the most sense. The other cannabinoids, however, are not that far away from us. The other cannabinoids are relatively easy for us to shift to. We’ve got 80 to 90 per cent of the work done on THCA [tetrahydrocannabinolic acid] to put it into a commercial form.
CP: What type of CBD is Willow making?
TP: It’s not synthetic CBD. The cannabidiol that we produce is exactly the same as what comes out of the plant. Biosynthetic CBD. Our process is natural as well because it does involve a life form. We use an organism to produce the product. Our goal is to produce other biosynthetic cannabinoids.
Askar Yimit, a scientist at Willow Biosciences Inc., prepares a colony picker to perform as a part of Willow's high-throughput research and development pipeline. Calgary, AB. August 29, 2019.Courtesy of manufacturer
CP: Have Willow scientists experimented with other cannabinoids?
TP: We’ve definitely produced other cannabinoids at the benchscale: THCA, CBCA [Cannabichromenic acid], THCVA [Tetrahydrocannabivarinic acid], CBDVA [Cannabidivarinic acid], CBGA [cannabigerolic acid]. Those are the ones we’ve stated publicly. One of the great things about biosynthesis is we’re not beholden to what the plant gives us. We can manufacture the cannabinoids at whatever level we want. THCV and CBDV occur at low concentrations in plant so they are expensive to produce, whereas in our system they would have a very similar price to other cannabinoids. We can make those cannabinoids right now that the plant is not making at a high level.
CP: At what stage is Willow with its biosynthetic CBD production?
TP: We’re still working at the laboratory environment. In the first half of 2020, we expect to start handing off yeast strains to our development manufacturing partner. There’s a process that we need to go through, which involves moving from the lab to the development facility and ultimately to large-scale manufacturing development. We’re going from the bench into the scale-up phase, that’s going to happen the first half of this year. Then in 2021 we will move from a 800 litre environment into something like a 100,000 litre environment where we’ll be manufacturing full scale at the end of 2021. The end of 2021 is when we expect to start the process of commercial manufacturing. We will be producing tons of product per annum. For instance, we could be producing over one tonne a month of CBD from a 100,000 litre tank.
CP: When do you expect to start seeing revenue?
TP: If we begin the process of manufacturing at the end of 2021, our first revenue, we would anticipate in 2022. We are well capitalized to do it.