At 30, despite the many obstacles that could stand in his way, Franck Milone firmly believes in the development of cannabis for medical use in France. The entrepreneur, suffering from multiple sclerosis, even aspires to become one of the key players in the sector by developing, in the coming years in Angers, a sector for the cultivation and production of medicinal products based on cannabis flowers. and its two molecules, THC and CBD. If the law prohibits it today,
Franck Milone believes that the lines will move as a first experiment around medical cannabis, reserved for 3,000 patients, was launched in France this year. He explains his ambitious project to 20 minutes.
How did your fight for the development of cannabis for therapeutic use come about?
About ten years ago, when I discovered my multiple sclerosis, I myself was confronted with the reality of the system, with the misunderstandings it arouses. The doctors prescribed me anxiolytics and sleeping pills, but their help is nothing like what cannabis gives me, which I then began to use medically. On the quality of sleep, fatigue,
spasticityWhich settles in a chronic way, it is a real plus … So much so that today, I am obliged to self-medicate. Even though it’s long, I’m motivated to make things happen. Our ambition is to become an international leader in the production of cannabis-based medicines, intended for patients who find themselves in therapeutic deadlock today.
This is a huge gamble, given the regulatory brakes that exist. How do you plan to go about it?
I implanted last year LaFleur in Angers, a territory at the forefront in the field of plants, to build, from next year, an agro-pharmaceutical industrial site, which would allow the creation of 200 direct jobs. We will go from agronomic innovation to the manufacture of drugs. Even if the authorization deadlines are extremely long, research projects have already been launched for the development of drugs from imported cannabis flowers. One of them, for which we had public funding, consists in judging the anticancer potential of certain assets. After the pre-clinical part, we should move on to human patients at the end of 2022. At the same time, we are working on innovative methods of extracting the active ingredients from cannabis flowers, but also on optimizing the culture. We just went up
an innovation chair with the Agrocampus Ouest school. By the end of the year, we must finalize our fundraising, from public and private investors, for a global project that amounts to more than a hundred million euros.
What if things don’t go the way you expect?
When we start working on the theme, with my Delled company created in 2014, we are aware of the brakes. But it was necessary to bring what was lacking until now, namely the will and the investment to innovate on this theme. In 2017, I was taken for a madman but since then, even if it’s slow, things are moving forward. Experimentation of medical cannabis launched this year in France shows that there are high expectations: between cancers, degenerative diseases, epilepsy, palliative situations… its use could concern between 200,000 and 1 million people in France. I believe scientists are ready and
public opinion also, even though
amalgam between medical cannabis and its recreational use is damaging. These are two distinct subjects: we can very well be prescribed opiate-based products, but this does not mean that we have legalized heroin!
There is also confusion with the development of CBD stores …
Patients today go to shops selling cannabis products, sold by people who are not pharmacists, not trained in prescribing health products. We are still a long way from secure access to medical cannabis through the health system. The drugs that we will develop will be in the form of capsules of extracts of cannabis flowers, but also of products for topical use, or even secure cartridges for vaporization. So many solutions that may have a rapid effect, or on the contrary a slower action, for a longer time, depending on the patient’s situation. The training of health professionals in the prescription and use of medical cannabis will therefore be a determining element.