Medical Cannabis Research

Australia’s leading contract research organization focused exclusively on medicinal cannabis treatments

About Applied Cannabis Research

Accelerate your medicinal cannabis clinical development program. From project management through to clinical trial monitoring, management and patient recruitment, we’re Australia’s leading contract research organization in the medicinal cannabis sector.

Medicinal Cannabis Research needs a different approach. Intellectual property positions are different. Budgets are smaller. Timescales are shorter. Regulatory pathways are newly established and more complex. Product companies undertaking research in the Medicinal Cannabis sector need a different research partner. A partner with hands-on experience in the sector; direct access to the largest patient pool in the country; multiple treatment sites in every state; data collection platforms that are compliant, and tailored to the medicinal cannabis sector.

Applied Cannabis Research is dedicated to assisting medicinal cannabis companies with the development of their products with a single, unified vision: the faster the clinical development stage is accomplished the quicker medicinal cannabis treatments reach those who need them – the patients.

Why Australia for Cannabis Research?

Pharmaceutical Approach

Products legally prescribed in Australia must be pharmaceuticals with known and tightly specified amounts of cannabinoids. They are manufactured in regulator-approved GMP facilities and must meet Australian medicinal cannabis quality standard TGO93. Products are prescribed in exact dosages and patients are monitored on a regular basis.

Regulatory advantages

Australia and New Zealand has the expeditious CTN (clinical trial notification) scheme. Australia’s regulator, the TGA, requires only a notification of a clinical trial, deferring responsibility to the HREC (Human Research Ethics Committee – equivalent of an IRB) resulting in a more efficient study start-up. The HREC used by Applied Cannabis Research meets weekly and can approve projects rapidly, reducing long ethics wait times.

R&D Tax benefits

Australia has a strongly advantageous R&D tax scheme that, for smaller companies, will pay 45% of your investment as a cash-rebate, with an equivalent amount payable on overseas spend. Larger companies receive a tax rebate rather than a cash payment. This means that for most companies up to 90% of the money spent in Australia on R&D can be returned in some form.

Federally Legal Framework

Australia legalised medicinal cannabis in 2016. Although patient uptake was slow at first, doctor and patient numbers are now increasing rapidly. Applied Cannabis Research has direct access to the largest patient pool in the country with recruitment capability in every state.

Who we work with

Principal Investigator
Dr John Barlow

Dr John
Barlow

Dr John Barlow is the Principal Investigator for the CACOS Study, Australia’s largest medicinal cannabis observational trial. He has more than 10 years experience in clinical trials in a range of medical, surgical and public health fields, particularly oncology, neurology and orthopaedics. John is a former Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at Monash University and was a Neil Hamilton Fairley Fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council. He holds a PhD from Monash University and has published more than 200 peer reviewed papers and abstracts encompassing a range of topics including endocrinology, clinical chemistry and drug evaluation.

ACR receives funding from industry clients including but not limited to licensed medicinal cannabis producers and suppliers.

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