Cannbit Ltd., a subsidiary of Tikun Olam-Cannbit Ltd. (TASE: TKUN), a leading medical cannabis company, and Canonic Ltd., a subsidiary of Evogene Ltd. (NASDAQ: EVGN) (TASE: EVGN), focused on the development of medical cannabis products, today announced that they have entered into a collaboration agreement for the development of novel medical cannabis products.

Cannabis is known to contain hundreds of active compounds, and a critical need in the medical cannabis industry today is to connect specific active compounds to the relevant medical indication and to develop cannabis strains and products that include these specific active compounds in a stable and consistent manner. Many companies and research centers are attempting to address this challenge, but to date only limited success has been reported. Cannbit and Canonic believe that integrating their complementary cannabis expertise and data will be a significant and unique advantage in providing a solution to this challenge.

The companies expect that a combination of Cannbit’s vast clinical data with respect to the impact of medical cannabis strains over many years, together with Canonic’s recognized leading computational biology platform and cannabis breeding capabilities, will lead the companies to successful joint development of the target products. The development of the new products will be performed at Canonic’s R&D facility and will be based on cannabis strains that both companies will contribute to the collaboration.

According to the agreement, each company will have full commercial rights to the products arising from the collaboration, and there will be cross royalties by each to the other company. It is the intention of the parties that the collaboration will be performed according to a work plan to be agreed upon by the parties and which will serve as the basis for an agreement that will cover the development program. Additional financial terms of the collaboration were not disclosed.

Mr. Avinoam Sapir, CEO of Tikun Olam-Cannbit stated: “Combining the synergistic capabilities of Canonic and Cannbit should provide a substantial competitive advantage with respect to both timing and quality of results.  We are proud to partner with Canonic, a leader in the cannabis breeding field and computational genomics. The agreement is an important step in Tikun Olam-Cannbit’s strategic growth and builds on other recently signed significant agreements.”

Dr. Arnon Heyman, CEO of Canonic stated: “We enthusiastically look forward to this collaboration with Cannbit, a leading medical cannabis company with substantial commercial experience and clinical data.  Representing an important part of our “Precise” product program, we are confident that this combination of complementary capabilities and technologies is unique in the cannabis field and look forward to reporting our progress.”