Universal Ibogaine Inc. (UI) (
TSX-V.IBO,
Forum) is a company uniquely-positioned to address the opioid epidemic through a safe, effective, and proven plant medicine – Ibogaine – and a proven treatment protocol which has successfully treated thousands of patients.
In this intriguing and timely video Q&A interview, Stockhouse Media’s Dave Jackson met up with Nick Karos, CEO of Universal Ibogaine Inc, to get our investor audience caught up with the latest news and happenings from Universal Ibogaine Inc.
(CLICK IMAGE TO PLAY VIDEO)
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
SH: To start off with, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the history of the company?
NK: I'm an ex-Wall Street executive, I've been in the business for a long time focusing on the capital market side. I became an investor in November of 2020 and just recently became the new CEO. Universal Ibogaine has been around for about three and a half to four years and at that time it was a lot of planning, a lot of getting us to where we are now and now, we're ready to move forward with hopefully with our clinical trials.
SH: Can you update our investor audience and your Universal Ibogaine shareholders on any new company developments, especially in the wake of COVID-19 and the omicron variant?
NK: Absolutely. Well if you've read the newspapers, these opioid addiction crisis has not gotten better during COVID, it's actually gotten far worse and I don't think we see any signs of that getting any better. What we did just recently, just the other day was we announced our two contract research organizations that are going to help us in this clinical trial application. This is huge news. It's something you don't do two years in advance. It just shows the street that we are making progress. These are the companies that will help us with this application and then they'll actually follow us through that whole process with conducting the trials, compiling all that data, submitting on a timely basis to health Canada. So it is big news and it just shows that we have made some progress from where we have been in the past.
SH: Nick, as just mentioned, you’ve been appointed interim CEO. What can you tell us about this exciting new endeavour and what it means for shareholders and potential investors?
NK: I think what the investing public needs to do first off is do some homework on ibogaine. Just Google it. This is a plant-based medicine that's been studied extensively for over 30 years. Our goal is to break through or actually transform the addiction treatment model because of the attributes of ibogaine, what it can do for this addiction treatment process and that's really our goal. It's really a transformative product. There is no other psychedelic like this, it's an addiction interrupter and it's very exciting where we are positioned now.
SH: For company shareholders and potential investors, what kind of future development and progress can we expect at your state-of-the-art holistic care clinics?
NK: Correct. As everyone, pretty much everyone knows someone or has some connection to someone who's been through addiction or had issues and it's obviously well known that aftercare is very, very important. Our process can help but to really have long term success, long-term recovery, you have to do aftercare. We are developing a brand-new program that will go along with ibogaine, actually will work for non ibogaine also, but as we have a state of the art of 40 plus day aftercare program and everyone knows that that is the key to long term success. You'll hear more about that down the road. We have our clinic in Kelburn and we will be expanding to other clinics and there's going to be a lot of things to look at for the next 10, 12 months.
SH: What separates Universal Ibogaine from the competition and makes your business model unique?
NK: Well, what separates us from the other psychedelic companies is ibogaine itself. There is no other drug like ibogaine that can do what it does. There are some things you can and cannot talk about because we're applying for trials, but it's interrupted like none other, there is a residual effect where it can take away the craving for the drug. These are very well studied. Of course I have to call it anecdotal evidence but as you mentioned earlier, our sister clinic there in Cancun has been in business for over 10 years. They're the leader in this ibogaine business that's in different countries, that separates us. There's a lot of psilocybin, MDMA out there. We're really the leader in this industry and also, we have a very clear path of how we're going to use this. We are going to use this in clinics wherever we can and with our protocol and that's what we're trying to approve with Health Canada, is our safety protocol in a clinic. The difference another big difference is psilocybin and such will maybe be in at home treatment by prescription. Ours will be in a clinic in a treatment facility. So it's a very special process. So we are positioned at the forefront and we're years ahead of anyone else who's going to try.
SH: What’s the long-term strategy for the company moving into the future, and what should retail and institutional investors be looking out for?
NK: Long term outside of ancillary businesses and such we plan to make this a licensing model so we can get this out to the public in the best and quickest way. This is an issue that affects everyone. It doesn't affect just the patient, it affects families, businesses, if you're an employee and you you're having issues with an addiction, it affects that business, it affects people all around you. We will be licensing this as we can to other facilities and hopefully, they can integrate our protocol into their aftercare program and it's going to be really exciting when we get this completed. We’re very hopeful.
SH: And finally, Nick, if there’s anything I’ve overlooked, please feel free to elaborate.
NK: Once again, I encourage investors to please do some homework on ibogaine. We have our website; we have the clear sky recovery website down in Mexico. There are some videos on there, some to testimonials and it's worth the half an hour. You'll be quite amazed.
For regular updates, visit
universalibogaine.com.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.