Tag Archives: medtech

From MedTech to Cannabis: A Q&A with Jennifer Raeder-Devens

By Aaron G. Biros
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Project Yosemite, a cannabis product innovation and brand development company, announced earlier this month the appointment of Jennifer Raeder-Devens as their new Chief Scientific Officer. Raeder-Devens is a veteran of the MedTech industry, working for companies like Becton Dickinson, Cardinal Health, Medtronic and 3M.

Prior to joining Yosemite, she was the Vice President of Research & Development at Becton, Dickinson, where she oversaw product development and technology strategies to launch infection prevention products including the ChloraPrep first-in-the-US sterile solution patient preoperative topical antiseptic. She was previously the Vice President of R&D, Strategy and Innovation at Cardinal Health. She’s also held roles at Medtronic, 3M Drug Delivery Systems and 3M Skin Health Division and she has a number of patents in drug delivery and medical devices.

Jennifer Raeder-Devens, Chief Scientific Officer at Project Yosemite

In November of 2018, Project Yosemite launched their first product, OLO, which is an infused, controlled-release sublingual strip. Part of Raeder-Devens’ new role at the company is the continued development and expansion of the OLO sublingual strip technology platform. Andrew Mack, CEO and founder of Project Yosemite, says he’s thrilled to have Raeder-Devens on the team. “Jennifer is an extremely accomplished scientist and engineer with extensive experience driving innovation and R&D in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries,” says Mack.

We caught up with Jennifer over the phone to talk about her background in the MedTech space, why she decided to jump ship to join the cannabis industry and what she’s excited to work on now.

Cannabis Industry Journal: Can you tell us about your background, including your work with 3M and Medtronic? 

Jennifer Raeder-Devens: I’m coming directly from Becton Dickinson, a global med tech company, where I supervised the development of drug-device combination products for topical antiseptics. I spent about 10 years there, mostly in topical drug and combination product development. Prior to that, I was at 3M and Medtronic working in drug-device combination products. At 3M, I was supervising a team of technology developers for the 3M Drug Delivery Systems business. I had experience working with designing and manufacturing transdermal, nasal, buccal and inhalation drug delivery mechanisms for pharmaceutical partners.

I worked on implantable drug delivery systems at Medtronic, which included working on the biocompatibility of things like pacemakers and drug infusion pumps and optimizing them to reduce infection and enhance healing after the implantation procedure.

CIJ: What made you consider joining the cannabis industry? 

Jennifer: With my work in topicals, transdermal and inhalation drug delivery, I had an easy understanding of the different routes of administration we see today in the cannabis industry. And so, from the technology standpoint, I thought this was a place I could contribute to immediately. And then what got me really excited about it was thinking about cannabis, and just like any other drug, with oral drug delivery, you’ve got first class metabolism and side effects from the 11-Hydroxy-THC that are undesirable and you’d rather not have delivered through the gut.

OLO sublingual strips have a 10-minute onset time

I got excited when I saw the development of things like sublingual strips that were focusing on alternatives to smoking that would preserve that relatively fast onset and mitigate some of the side effects of edibles.

The other thing I really like about the cannabis industry: Previously I have been very focused on known drugs that are already approved and repurposing them into a new delivery system. What really interests me about the cannabis industry is the active cannabinoids and terpenes are somewhat known and somewhat unknown, so there is this really interesting challenge there of trying to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of producing therapeutic effects.

It is a really interesting space where the indications of certain molecules are evolving along with the delivery technology. So, it is a really exciting and eye-opening way to take the next step in my career and have this wide-open space in front of me, both in terms of the different cannabinoids, their effects and the delivery systems we can use.

CIJ: How might you be prepared, given your background, for some of the challenges in the cannabis space?

Jennifer: I think the challenges in cannabis delivery are not different from the challenges in pharmaceutical drug delivery. It’s just that we have this additional complexity of the entourage effect. We can be engineering not just the main ingredient of THC, but also all the other cannabinoids and terpenes. So, for example, with my background in infection prevention, we build a product that we know reduces the risk of infection, but we are really challenged to actually prove it reduces the risk of infection. We have a similar situation in the cannabis industry, where we can get the THC, or CBG or CBN where we want it to go, but then we are really challenged to figure out how we can find, what we call in the pharmaceutical industry, a surrogate end point for efficacy, so that we can test that product and really believe that when we put the product on the market, even though we haven’t tested thousands of users or conducted large randomized clinical trials, that the effect will be shown. We are networking and partnering with a good scientific community to build the right product and do some testing at a small scale that really demonstrates the product achieves the effect that we are really looking for.

CIJ: Can you tell us a little about your new role with Project Yosemite?

Jennifer: My job description falls into three buckets: The first part is that we are forming a scientific advisory board and we are working with some of the leading cannabinoid researchers around the country and around the world. These are the people identifying whether or not certain cannabinoids could reduce cancer cell metabolism or whether cannabinoids contribute to weight loss or diabetes control and other things of that nature. We are trying to reach as far upstream as we can to grasp the emerging understanding of the performance of cannabinoids and terpenes in the endocannabinoid system. So, part of my job is to chair that scientific advisory board, get the thought leaders together in the room and have them bring their knowledge and explore with our own knowledge what cannabis can really do.

The OLO sublingual strips

I have worked in topical, transdermal, buccal, nasal, inhalation drug delivery. In the second bucket of my job, we are trying to understand a given indication or experience that our users want to have, what would be the right route for them. We are challenging our sublingual delivery mechanism to see how fast of an onset we can really get. Right now, we are at 10 minutes for drug delivery in sublingual and we are still trying to get an even faster onset time for the sublingual strip.

For other indications, like chronic pain, we may want to think about a sustained release, so sort of aligning the different indications with which different cannabinoids and terpenes will work for it and see which delivery platform will work for what we are trying to accomplish in each indication.  So, we do not plan to remain solely a sublingual strip company, but will build out additional delivery platforms as we develop new indications.

Right now, we are working upstream with the growers and the processors to get cannabis oil and extracts. Some of the growers are working on different genetics in their cultivars to grow plants that have different ratios of different cannabinoids that we know from the emerging research will have an impact on people’s experience. Now we are working with growers to really get ahead of the curve on how to formulate products with various cannabinoids.

We have an R&D team in house that I supervise. We are always working with our production team to make small improvements such as the faster onset and the dissolution rate and things like flavors, which covers a downstream focus as well.

Philly Tech Week Hosts Conference on Cannabis Investment and Medtech

By Aaron G. Biros
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Philly Tech Week held its first cannabis industry conference this past weekend, hosted by Greenhouse Ventures, a cannabis startup accelerator based in the Northeast. The Innovation in the Cannabis Industry conference brought leaders in cannabis technology, investing and medical research to discuss the changing landscape of the cannabis marketplace in the Northeast.

Tyler Dautrich, co-founder of Greenhouse ventures, welcomes a sold-out crowd.
Tyler Dautrich, co-founder of Greenhouse ventures, welcomes attendees; the event sold out.

Kicking off the event, Tyler Dautrich, co-founder of Greenhouse Ventures, welcomed attendees to the first ever Philadelphia cannabis conference. The initial panel of the day reviewed investment trends and included Scott Greiper, president & founding partner of Viridian Capital Advisors, Marc J. Ross, Esq., founding partner of Sichenzia Ross Friedman Ference LLP, Jim Fitzpatrick, advisory board member at Kodiak Capital Group and John Kagia, director of industry analytics at New Frontier Data Analytics. The panel, moderated by Kevin Provost, co-founder of Greenhouse Ventures, examined various financial trends in the marketplace, roadblocks to raising capital for startups and emerging markets.

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The Investment Trends Panel from left to right: Scott Greiper of Viridian Capital, Jim Fitzpatrick of Kodiak Capital, Marc Ross, Esq., John Kagia of New Frontier and moderated by Kevin Provost.

John Kagia of New Frontier provided useful tools in comparing cultivation models as well as industry projections. “It [the legal cannabis market] has largely been dominated by the West Coast,” said Kagia. “The East Coast is very well poised for success.” Scott Greiper, president of Viridian Capital, discussed his top performing markets. “Biotech is definitely the top performing category and a close second is cultivation and retail –production and sale is at the root of every industry,” said Greiper. “At its core, cannabis is an agricultural commodity.” He went on to list infused products as the third top performing market, noting that edibles account for over half of retail sales.

Future Business Outlook Panel from left to right: Steven Schain of Schain Law Firm, Leslie Bocksor of Electrum Partners and Matt Karnes of Greenwave Advisors.
Future Business Outlook Panel from left to right: Steven Schain of Schain Law Firm, Leslie Bocksor of Electrum Partners and Matt Karnes of Greenwave Advisors.

In looking at emerging markets, Leslie Bocksor, president and founder of Electrum Partners, echoed Scott Greiper’s advice for new businesses to stay grounded in the numbers and operations. “Stay focused on solid, tangible data,” Bocksor said. The two also shared a similar view in opportunities in hemp. “Hemp is a very underserved niche and there are ample opportunities for new businesses,” said Bocksor.

State Senator Daylin Leach (D- Montgomery/Delaware), co-sponsor of the bill for Pennsylvania’s medical cannabis legalization, delivered the keynote address. He lauded the bill, mentioning that patient advocates were instrumental in swaying the legislature. “This is the most important piece of legislation for PA in thirty years,” said Leach. “I have always believed in moving this bill forward and very recently, we passed it with a huge bipartisan majority.” Attendees gave Senator Leach a standing ovation in response to his positive outlook on Pennsylvania’s future with cannabis. “This will be a huge new industry and medical technology is vital to moving it forward.”

State Senator Daylin leach was welcomed with a standing ovation.
State Senator Daylin Leach was welcomed with a standing ovation.

In the afternoon, a panel on medical technology discussed the need for more comprehensive diagnostic tools and crowd-sourced data for treatment with cannabis. David Goldstein, chief executive officer and founder of PotBotics, expressed concerns over bringing consistency to patients. “We need to understand how cannabinoids are affecting patients,” said Goldstein. “We want patients to feel confident in their medication.”

David Goldstein (center) sat on a panel discussing med-tech and how it can help the cannabis industry.
David Goldstein (center) sat on a panel discussing med-tech and how it can help the cannabis industry.

The conference closed with a panel of physicians discussing their clinical experience with recommending cannabis and the gaps in medical research. Among them, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, board-certified anesthesiologist and pain management specialist from Pearl River, New York, discussed some of his experience in recommending cannabis in treating neuropathic pain. The closing panel emphasized the need to educate more physicians and some of the obstacles to physicians recommending cannabis. The conference highlighted the Northeast as a quickly emerging cannabis market ripe with business opportunity.