Spotlight on Arma Therapeutics Inc.
Q&A with Tegan Adams, BSc., MSc., Director of Psychiatric Research
April 5, 2022
Erin Roche, Candy & Flowers
What is Arma Therapeutics?
Arma therapeutics is a mid-stage pharmaceutical company with headquarters in Vancouver BC. Our vision is to create a global fair trade and sustainable agritech network for pharmaceuticals to flourish. We’d like to bring as many new, naturally derived drugs to the emerging mental health marketplace as fast as possible. Our goal is to be, at a minimum, a multi-billion dollar asset by enterprise valuation in year five of operations.
Our technical team was formed in 2019, and we became federally incorporated in March 2021. We have identified unique industry revenue verticals, qualified our supply chain facilities, have our patent submission work underway and formed our team of university professors, commercial farmers, pharmaceutical executives and MDs alike. With the success of closing an additional financing, product registration is scheduled for 2023 and 2024 in B2B and B2C medical prescription marketplaces. Arma works in different partnership formats with commercial agriculture producers, pharmaceutical manufacturing and distribution lines globally. Operationally we work in GMP and EU GMP grade facilities only and are looking to expand our product development partnership with the University of British Columbia for clinical use.
What products will Arma therapeutics offer?
We’ve selected ten ingredients and three drug formulas that are anticipated for use in the emerging mental health marketplace and all have a preference for naturally derived ingredients with customized side-effect mitigation and dosage control mechanisms in place. An example of one of our products is MDMA Tea – which will be very popular and likely our MVP of the products that go to market. Imagine giving your romantic partner a warm infused tea with a microdose amount of MDMA, from the comfort of your home while talking to your therapist.
Many plants, barks and roots have aphrodisiac qualities that we have been experimenting with now for more than three years across international supply chains. We believe that making a light dose or microdose tea that has a natural aphrodisiac in it will be a great product for today's world to remember what it’s like to feel loved. Given the current situation of restricted living, illness and death in a pandemic, combined with political unrest and the global challenge of peace with war raging in Ukraine, everywhere we look, people are suffering. When we look at what products to bring to market, we really want to focus on something that will ease the suffering and promote self-love and peace, like MDMA-Tea.
Arma is looking at combining our product experience in our psychiatric model with the metaverse. MDMA-tea is not just something for couples, it’s also for singles. Everyone needs a reminder about the importance of self-love, whether it is to service a relationship with oneself, or with one’s partner or family member. MDMA can be a great ‘truth bomb’ and while the truth can sometimes hurt, it’s always for the best. Metaverse adoption is increasing because everyone wants a new reality that's not the one we're living in now. We are exploring the combination of pharmaceuticals and technology to run our new and innovative clinical study work in partnership with our product development team at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
What’s unique about our product development partnership? It’s in the Macmillan building, which was home to the faculty of agriculture for many years, until it changed its name to the “Faculty of Land and Food Systems.” At its core, our business model is focused on linking land, food and community together as per the principles of sustainable agriculture and global fair trade.
What’s your vision for distribution once you have everything manufactured?
The drugs that we're making and the ingredients that we're using are suitable for the regulated global distribution channels in pharmaceuticals. They'll be scripted through psychiatrists’ offices, and we'll be helping create a new category for mental health drugs that are seen in a different way. We're also looking at using a new treatment paradigm to get there which is something that we'll be releasing more information on soon.
We won’t release all of our distribution channels yet, partially to preserve our competitive strategy, but distribution will primarily be through regulated channels. We are operating only under the controlled drugs and substances act; we aren’t participating in anything related to the cannabis act or cannabis products, state-wide legislation or other non-federally compliant rules.
Currently there are many unregulated access points to buy psychedelics. These sophisticated unregulated marketplaces use pharmaceutical grade equipment and branded packaging; and we have seen many online stores carrying LSD, MDMA, DMT and more thriving during the pandemic. With wider decriminalization, we will see more unregulated products trending which may place more pressure on the government to create a regulated system for them, effectively charging a tax. In the name of fairness and compliance, there is a growing amount of evidence with every new online store that launches itself with LSD candies and DMT vapes to support an argument for legalization.
The world is going to look different over the next one to three years. Management of any successful company must stay flexible to changing landscapes and our intent is first to launch these products through regulated channels that currently exist; however we have our eye on a few prizes that may come sooner.
Why did you start the company?
When I first started looking at these drugs, I was working at a Health Canada FDA licensed lab in Toronto, Ontario. I was doing the business planning and started doing research in a regulated environment to see what would be possible. New clients, most of which were family offices and millionaires, were showing up asking for business models for new plant-derived medicine while strong interest in somatic healing has been rising over the past 5 years. More people are seeking alternatives like Ayahuasca journeys and rejecting the current healthcare system. More and more religious and First Nation groups are standing up and saying they want control of their health; and they want control of the plants that they need to heal. I've always been for proliferating access to the natural environment, but one thing I learned over the years as a previous university-enticed climate activist is that if you want to make change, you need to do it through professional business outlets and in combination with high profile banks and institutions and with the right lawyers, and that's where we are now.
What else do you want investors to know about Arma Therapeutics?
With the success of our financing targets, the company is ready to mobilize and we’re on track to register new regulated products in 2023 and 2024. The most exciting thing is seeing how close we are to product registration. We have been at this since 2019, we're a very strong technical operations group, and we're definitely ahead on the product development and R&D side. However, we haven't done any marketing or branding work, and we're just starting to bring on partners in that area. We really are a team of pharmaceutical and agri-commercial, medical doctors and psychiatrists, infrastructure partners and raw materials providers as well as capital markets and finance executives with ownership at the institutional level. We’ve independently financed our seed round and operations through 2021 and now with successful proof of concept work complete on our GMP grade product lines, we’re open to brokerage of our pre-IPO private round. This is a very special healthcare-based agritech ESG opportunity for the right partner.
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