Could 2025 be year of cannabis industry-university partnerships?

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2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for partnerships between the cannabis industry and universities, both in the United States and globally.

While academic collaborations are not a new concept, the cannabis industry has been slow to embrace them – mainly because marijuana is illegal on the federal level in the United States.

However, as the industry matures, these partnerships represent the next logical step for companies with the vision and resources to drive innovation, influence policy and shape the future of cannabis.

The potential for collaboration spans research partnerships, sponsored research agreements, joint ventures and licensing arrangements through technology transfer agreements.

Universities play a crucial role in early stage innovation, while industry partners provide the resources and infrastructure for commercialization.

Universities across the United States already are racing to respond to the rapid rise of the cannabis industry, creating education programs to meet surging student demand – even in states where marijuana remains illegal.

Many of these institutions are eager to forge partnerships with cannabis businesses, leveraging their academic expertise, cutting-edge research capabilities and access to patient populations.

Meanwhile, cannabis companies bring the entrepreneurial know-how to commercialize innovations and get them to market.

American agricultural schools have led the way in cannabis-related partnerships, particularly in hemp research.

Institutions such as the University of Kentucky, Clemson University, the University of North Carolina and Cornell University have collaborated with hemp farmers to tackle pesticide management, crop steering and genetic seed-engineering challenges.

These efforts aim to improve plant traits, including developing polyploid species.

Johns Hopkins University, which established the Cannabis Science Laboratory to explore key topics, currently is investigating:

• The comparative effects of delta-9 THC versus delta-8 THC and other isomers.
• The risks of oral CBD products that might inhibit drug metabolism.
• A large-scale observational study capturing real-world data about the health impacts of medicinal cannabis use.

Johns Hopkins’ work highlights the depth of academic expertise that could be unlocked through more extensive industry partnerships.

With marijuana rescheduling potentially looming in the United States, medical cannabis rapidly expanding across Europe and Germany’s recreational market gaining momentum, the time is right to bridge academia and the MJ industry for cutting-edge advancements and to gain access to patented technologies and research.

Germany’s retail pilot program

Europe might well be the catalyst for a surge in university-private partnerships in 2025, thanks to its medical cannabis-first approach to legalization.

Even in Germany – the first country in the European Union to legalize recreational cannabis – sales are restricted to pharmacies and online medical marijuana clinics.

For foreign companies eyeing the European market, adopting a medical cannabis business model has become essential, making partnerships with universities an ideal gateway into this regulated marketplace.

Germany’s approach to recreational cannabis retail is far more measured and scientifically driven compared to the United States, where mixed-use shops combine medical and adult-use marijuana sales.

Germany recently announced a retail pilot program as part of the next phase to usher in recreational marijuana sales by integrating university research partnerships directly into the program’s framework, similar to those in the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Germany’s retail pilot program, scheduled to last five years, will occur in select cities and is limited to registered participants.

One of the country’s leading cannabis companies, the Berlin-based Sanity Group, is spearheading the program.

According to the company, Prof. Christian Ulrichs, head of urban plant ecophysiology at Humboldt University of Berlin, will be the scientific lead for the pilot study.

The program will utilize software from Switzerland-based software-development company Cannavigia to document sales quantities and track the entire supply chain.

According to the Sanity Group, this meticulous system will allow an in-depth analysis of consumer behavior and consumption patterns.

Canadian retail chain High Tide also is participating in the German pilot program.

In partnership with a university, High Tide will provide the data, analysis and insights required by the German government to inform cannabis policy.

According to a recent news release, High Tide has “been preparing to participate in these consumer research projects and have recruited prominent academics to develop a proposal focusing on consumer behavior.”

Licensing opportunities and partnerships

Universities might not be in the business of directly commercializing products, but they are a hotbed of innovation with potential to generate meaningful revenue from intellectual property (IP).

Technology-transfer partnerships enable universities to retain and monetize their IP while accelerating research and product development.

Such collaborations bring together shared expertise, academic credibility and science-backed evidence, creating a win-win scenario for both parties.

Lance Anderson, an Austin, Texas-based partner at the law firm Dickinson Wright and former in-house counsel for a large public research university system, sees technology transfer partnerships as an untapped opportunity for the cannabis industry.

“Cannabis businesses are no strangers to utilizing multiple entities in their corporate structuring,” Anderson said.

“They may have a holding company that owns the real estate, a staffing company that manages HR for the flower-touching operations and another that holds the intellectual property.

“You’re seeing an entire industry familiar with IP licensing for the first time in a long time, and universities want in by licensing their intellectual property.”

Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins has a robust technology transfer department and offers insights into how academia evaluates innovations for licensing.

Their process includes asking critical questions, such as:

• What problem does this invention solve, and how significant is the unmet need?
• Is the technology marginally improving existing solutions, or is it groundbreaking?
• What type of company might license the technology, and who would be the end-user?
• How much funding has been invested in the invention, and what further development is needed for commercialization or collaboration?

Questions such as these underscore the potential of university partnerships to drive advancements across the cannabis and psychedelics industries, from cultivation and genetics to neuroscience, pharmacology, agricultural innovation, extraction methods and precision dosing technologies.

Whether licensing patented technologies, fine-tuning existing inventions or seeking academic research partners, these collaborations present unparalleled opportunities to push the boundaries of innovation.

For now, regulatory hurdles continue to restrict the scope of these partnerships and the flow of funding.

However, with the potential for the rescheduling of marijuana in the United States, the landscape is likely to shift dramatically.

If rescheduling occurs, the floodgates will open for public-private partnerships and institutional investments, positioning 2025 as the year of groundbreaking collaborations between universities and the cannabis industry.

Pam Chmiel is the director of marketing for Denver-based 420 Digital Studios. She can be reached at pam@420digitalstudio.com.