We tend to admire companies that strive to advance the quality of life for humankind, and we look for efficacy within a company’s agenda. Dissecting the narrative, leaning on experts, and digging into the behind-the-scenes maneuvers is how we evaluate the fundamental potential of a small-cap company.
Which is why we’re looking at what Cardiol Therapeutics has been doing between press releases lately.
Cardiol Therapeutics (CANADA: CRDL) (U.S.: CRTPF) (EUROPE: CT9) has decided to go to war against heart disease, with a specific focus on deadly inflammatory processes that take place in the heart.
Their weapon of choice?
Cannabidiol.
In light of the company’s recent application to list on the premier biotech exchange, the NASDAQ, the efficacy of cannabidiol in the biopharmaceutical industry is starting to solidify. NASDAQ-issuer (and newly acquired subsidiary of Jazz Pharmaceuticals) GW Pharma will tell you the same thing. When a biopharma giant pays US$7.2 billion to acquire a company doing what Cardiol does, the world tends to lean in a bit closer.
So here we are.
Let’s Talk Drugs
Extensively researched to show effective inflammatory reduction in several pre-clinical tests that have now shaped the basis for the Phase ll/lll clinical programs, cannabidiol is the compound of choice for Cardiol, in the purest form imaginable. Already on the market (and available online through Shoppers Drug Mart) with their oral formulation, CortalexTM, the company is currently researching several areas of application and consumption methods for their proprietary CBD product, CardiolRx™.
CEO, David Elsley, outlines the efficacy of Cardiol’s current approach when put up against one of the most profitable drugs in the world: Aspirin.
“We are pursuing two approaches for delivering therapeutic doses of CBD to patients. One is oral administration and the other is subcutaneous injection, which is similar to administering insulin. With oral administration, we benefit from the fact that we manufacture our CBD as part of a pharmaceutical process and can therefore offer high purity, very high concentration, and consistent quality. You can compare our approach to manufacturing CardiolRx™ to the approach Bayer has utilized for decades to mass manufacture Aspirin. Like Aspirin, which was first discovered and extracted from a botanical source and later produced in a laboratory, Cardiol’s approach to producing its pure CBD medicines also follows a pharmaceutical production process to ensure drug purity, consistency, stability, and affordability. The huge success of Aspirin shows just one of many examples where pharmaceutical production processes allow new important medicines to be mass produced.”
Is Cardiol Trying to Cure COVID-19?
Absolutely not.
The relevance to COVID-19 in relation to Cardiol’s ongoing research and development is the crippling effect on the body that many COVID-19 patients experience when hospitalized due to the virus. Due to COVID-19’s attack on the immune system during times of infection, the risk for patients with myocarditis and other pre-existing cardiovascular conditions to undergo cardiac arrest is amplified. With the anti-inflammatory properties of CardiolRx, Cardiol believes it can help mitigate the additional risks for patients with pre-existing and/or ongoing inflammatory heart issues, which have been unfortunate enough to be hospitalized due to COVID-19 exposure.
David Elsley goes into depth regarding any confusion between Cardiol’s mandate and COVID-19’s relevance to the crippling health issues Cardiol is aiming to alleviate.
“We are not manufacturing a drug for COVID-19. It is also far from our intention to push ourselves into the foreground in this way. However, people with cardiovascular disease are at-risk patients who are much more vulnerable to the damaging effects of COVID-19. Even when the pandemic is over, the virus will remain and be with us, much like the annual wave of influenza. Patients who develop severe courses, often associated with inflammation, will need to be treated. The pandemic opens up the opportunity for us to conduct our studies in an accelerated manner, as there is great interest on the part of clinics and regulatory authorities to obtain effective drugs. For this reason, we are pushing ahead with studies around COVID-19, which, by the way, are well advanced. That said, our drug is intended to address heart disease in general.”
Cardiol’s Clinical Programs May Be More Relevant Than You Think
As Cardiol propels efforts to combat inflammatory heart disease, one of America’s most prevalent causes of death, they’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to the benefits of cannabidiol to the human heart. Beyond the scope of their current phase ll/lll clinical trials, the company plans to lead the way for the upcoming generation of cannabidiol-based medicines.
The pipeline for Cardiol brings focus toward innovations such as:
- Injectable formulations, which carry the ultra-pure cannabidiol to the site of disease on a much more efficient level, and
- The exploration of the potential of cannabidiol to drastically reduce one of chemotherapy’s more dangerous side-effects: Cardiotoxicity.
Leede Jones Gable analyst, Douglas Loe, who gave Cardiol a “speculative buy” rating, explained his take on Cardiol’s relevance in the medical world.
“Cannabidiol’s clinical prospects in cardiovascular disease are, perhaps surprisingly at least to us initially, quite well-documented in the medical literature in preclinical models of disease,” Loe wrote, “and our diligence thus suggests to us that Cardiol’s initiative to more fully test cannabidiol’s clinical prospects is justified and with strong prospects for value creation based on future Phase II/III efficacy signals that we expect to transpire during our forecast period.
“What we found most striking in our investigation of cannabidiol’s medical prospects in cardiovascular disease was just how well-characterized its prospects actually were in this disease category, despite which few if any firms other than Cardiol are exploring this activity,” added Loe.
COVID-19-associated cardiovascular disease, acute myocarditis, and diastolic heart failure are among conditions that CardiolRxTM has the potential to treat. Additionally, Cardiol’s strategic manufacturing partnership for CardiolRx with Purisys and Dalton Pharma Services provides a number of competitive advantages in medical markets, where cannabidiol purity is crucial to clinical success.
Disclaimer: Cardiol Therapeutics is a communications client of Edge Investments, and we own shares in the company. … …