Joining OCT's innovative journey - Lord Mott OBE

In February, I was pleased to join OCT as an independent Non-Executive Director to support the Company in its vital mission to harness the therapeutic power of cannabinoids to help people living with debilitating conditions.

It is a privilege to be joining OCT at this important moment in its development as the Company moves its second programme forward, into the clinic.  OCT130401, is a drug/device combination targeting Trigeminal Neuralgia ("TN"), and it reinforces and builds upon the Company’s successful clinical progression of its lead asset, OCT461201.

Since coming on board, it has been a pleasure to begin working alongside and getting to know my new colleagues: I have been inspired both by the Board’s expertise, creativity and energy, as well as by their evident and unwavering desire to bring treatments to market that will make a tangible difference to the lives of people living with rare and painful diseases.

Many of us will sadly have found ourselves at some point comforting friends or family members whose lives have been impacted or altered, sometimes radically, by chronic pain conditions or cancer, as well as finding ourselves having to cope with the consequences of these shared, and often unexpected, experiences. So, it is an enormous privilege to be part of a team dedicated to finding safe, effective, and rigorously tested solutions for those in chronic pain.

The principle of using cannabinoids to help people living with chronic pain has been around for a long time. But OCT’s decision to pursue a pharmaceutical approach is timely, pragmatic, and, critically, will, I believe, lead to better outcomes for patients. We have all read heart-breaking news stories about people unable to receive treatments which might make a significant positive impact on their lives, because doctors cannot in good conscience prescribe such untested therapeutics. That is why OCT is doing what it is doing. Through following a clinical pathway, OCT is developing treatments which we hope clinicians can be confident in prescribing safely to patients.

An unavoidable by-product of OCT’s commitment to creating reliable treatments which will be safe, effective, and work the same way every single time a patient receives a dose, is that the route to commercialisation cannot be achieved overnight. But all of us appreciate that results worth having invariably require huge amounts of pre-planning and testing before they can be secured.

Along its route to bring drugs to market in order to help people living with debilitating conditions, OCT continues to generate impressive proof-points of delivery which give us and our investors further confidence as the story grows. This month's exciting iNGENu announcement signals the latest chapter in OCT’s growth story as, fewer than 3 years since flotation, it will now have two drugs in the clinic. 

It is for these reasons that I believe in OCT’s mission and in the bright future that lies ahead for the Company and its assets. It’s why I am also so pleased to be a part of its story, bringing help to those of us living with chronic pain.