While his colleagues were poring over patients’ charts and prescribing medicines, Inam Ahmed, MD was thinking about cannabis, planes and money.
After spending nine years in the pharmaceuticals industry designing and conducting complex clinical trials, he abandoned a conventional six-figure salary path job to launch a start up with a rather unusual focus: the use of cannabis as an active pharmaceutical ingredient, which drew on the lessons of Prohibition — another market emerging from a long period of criminalization.
“During the day I was designing complex clinical research protocols, and at night I was studying cannabis while watching Narcos on Netflix” he says. “I wondered if I could only combine both, it would be a dream come true.”
It was an unlikely initiative for a medical doctor – generally doctors were against the legalization movement.
Yet his company Restem Therapeutics (whose logo is a crystalized cannabis leaf) has grown rapidly since its creation in 2017, and attracted millions of dollars of investment and partnerships. If you want to get started in the profitable world of solventless extracts, then look at the different manufacturing options, such as outsourcing to reliable cannabis manufacturers. Otherwise, if you’re looking to become a manufacturer, you might be interested in finding some professional equipment found in the industry. For example, the best rosin presses deliver between 300 and 1500 PSI, and if creating quality products is your aim, you’re going to want to research and educate yourself and your staff regarding such equipment and extraction processes.
It was Dr. Inam’s belated experiences with the drug that first convinced him to develop his start-up idea. “I never consumed cannabis once in my life until June 2017,” he says. “I am a doctor and it was never really an option for me.”
He was furthermore cautious about the intricacies of a product which has been prohibited under federal law since 1970, even though the law has been easing up for medical use in individual states, led by California in 1996. That pressure continues to create complications for providers, as banks and investors are wary of direct involvement.
Within a year of conceptualizing his idea, Dr. Inam decided to quit his lucrative career in the clinical research and launch his company. He was the only full time employee of the company at that time and invested six figures out of his own savings to develop a proprietary technology called CMURI™ – that can extract Phytocannabinoids and infuse it into the drug molecule at ultra-high speeds.
To understand why his start-up is so disruptive, it’s important to understand the suite of applications for cannabis and where his company fit in. With the opioid crisis casualties now competing gun deaths in the United States and last year’s opioid overdoses alone outstripping the total American fatalities in Vietnam and Iraq, there is a frantic need for alternative pain management.
This is where Restem Therapeutics’ products come in. Restem Therapeutics is currently developing synthetically‐formulated cannabidiol‐based medicine, pursuing the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for drugs. Restem Therapeutics has achieved favorable preclinical results in the development of cannabinoid medicines for treatment of dysmenorrhea, migraine and pain management.
“We are in the process of partnering with two companies that are interested in using our cannabidiol extraction technology for their cannabidiol based nutrients and supplements,” he says, “this partnership is expected to generated over $30 million dollars in annual profits that will be used to fuel our cannabis based clinical research studies.”
The Cannabis industry is projected to hit $22 billion mark by 2020 and this unconventional biotech entrepreneur with his Restem Therapeutics is ready to capture a significant portion of the market share. “We do cannabis like no one else does.”
Dr. Inam is also a pilot and an aviation enthusiast. He spends his free days with a team of designers that are helping him design an electric-motor aircraft.
You can find Inam Ahmed, MD and his company online at the links below:
https://www.instagram.com/inamahmedmd/
https://www.instagram.com/restemtherapeutics/
https://www.facebook.com/restemtherapeutics/
https://www.restemtherapeutics.com/
