Incannex Healthcare Limited
Cannabinoid-Based Medicines Leading the Next Wave of Healthcare Solutions

Incannex Healthcare Limited (IHL.ASX) is an international innovator and producer of a diverse range of medicinal cannabis and psychedelic pharmaceutical products with potential for global export. Initially, when the company started in 2016 as Impression Healthcare Limited, it focused on manufacturing oral medical devices for sleep disorders and mouth guards for sports. Ever since the Impression Healthcare board recognized that medicinal cannabis was emerging as potential treatment option, the company decided to expand by starting a research program for developing medicinal cannabis products. This led to the organization officially changing its name to ‘Incannex Healthcare Limited’ in 2020. The organization soon gained enough steam to be termed as a clinicalstage pharmaceutical development company. Currently, Incannex Healthcare is strictly a research and development firm, as their therapeutic products are still awaiting FDA and TGA approval.

There is a higher market demand for Incannex’s services as the biotech company focuses on solving major health problems with few or no viable remedies. Incannex is the only ASX-listed firm that has developed a plan to treat common major health issues by combining existing offpatent medications with medicinal cannabis or cannabinoids, as well as psychedelic medicine therapies. The company aims to develop treatment therapies for Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)/Concussion, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and inflammatory lung disorders.

Although there are a few treatments for such ailments, the patient compliance rate is meager.

To fill this gap in the medical space, Incannex combined cannabinoids with generic drug products to enhance therapeutic benefits. “Combining the cannabinoids allows us to generate a defendable IP position,

so we’re building our patent portfolio around the combinatorial products,” said Mark Bleackley, the Chief Scientific Officer at Incannex Healthcare.

The biotech company is working on completing clinical trials for three cannabinoid drug products and one psychedelic drug. Incannex is now conducting a phase 2 clinical trial to evaluate IHL-42X, a treatment for OSA that combines dronabinol and acetazolamide. The second development program is on IHL-216A, a combination drug that combines cannabidiol (CBD) and the anesthetic isoflurane, which Incannex discovered to work synergistically to alleviate neural damage, neuroinflammation, and behavioral abnormalities associated with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). The third drug is IHL-675A which is in its first phase of clinical trials. This study aims to demonstrate that the combination of cannabidiol (CBD) and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) identified in IHL-675A has no or minimal side effects. A phase 2 clinical trial investigating psilocybin assisted psychotherapy for treatment of generalized anxiety disorder is due to commence patient recruitment in early 2022.

As the FDA has already approved existing drugs containing the active pharmaceutical ingredients in Incannex’s drug products, past clinical trial results can expedite the registration process—eliminating the need for new trials and studies. This gives Incannex a vast potential to bring new medicines to the market in a shorter amount of time. Additionally, every condition that the organization targets represents a sizeable worldwide market where there are currently no or few registered drug treatments. This allows Incannex to build a substantial IP portfolio, giving the company a unique foothold in the pharmaceutical space.

Incannex has recently been listed as an Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) company and is also in the process of initiating a dual listing on NASDAQ, exposing the biotech company to a whole new investor base. One of the current strategic goals of Incannex is to gain recognition in the US markets, which will eventually lead to FDA approval of the drug products.