Doctors Ethan Russo And Dale Hunt Join Robert Clarke To Launch Cannabis IP-Licensing Firm

Lawyer and plant scientist Dale Hunt, leading cannabis researcher Ethan Russo, and botanist Robert Clarke have joined forces to launch Breeder’s Best.

The company will be focused on intellectual property licensing within the cannabis industry.

Breeder’s Best helps cannabis breeders legally protect their strains and bring their unique cultivars to new markets through use of a plant-licensing model, typical in mainstream agriculture.

“Independent breeders are fueling innovation in the cannabis industry by developing new cannabis varieties that deliver specific user experiences and better medicines,” Hunt told Benzinga.

Hunt, who is at the helm as CEO, said the Breeder’s Best team is working with artisan breeders to protect the varieties they have created and connect them with manufacturers and distributors who can bring their work to a wider market.

Russo, a former senior medical advisor to GW Pharmaceuticals PLC- ADR GWPH, serves as the new company’s medical director. Russo sess Breeder’s Best as “the only solution to a number of problems plaguing the cannabis industry, foremost among them a lack of diversity in cannabis chemovars resulting in material that lacks quality control and is far from best suited for its purpose.”

The therapeutic potential of cannabis can be greatly enhanced through the recognition of the unique properties that each of its cannabinoid and terpenoid components offer, he said.

“These should be the goals of all cannabis-based companies, and we can help achieve them through the efforts of what heretofore has been an ‘underground army’ of cannabis breeders artisans,” Russo added. "Cannabis consumers, whether employing it for medical purposes or recreation deserve no less, and this can only occur when the material that they purchase is of known composition and provenance with background analyses and safety testing data as documentation. It is our mission to make cannabis safer and better.”

Courtesy photo: Dr. Dale Hunt