Dunbar Pharmaceuticals is an Irish pharmaceutical cannabis company that has just launched the UK’s first plant-derived active ingredient, dronabinol.
In partnership with leading Specials manufacturer IPS Pharma, Dunbar’s ‘WaterClear THC’ products are now available to clinicians across the UK for the first time.
Dronabinol was the first cannabis-based medicine prescribed in major medical market and approved in the US in 1985 for chemotherapy-induced nausea.
The drug was almost exclusively synthetic until now. Dunbar’s ‘WaterClear’ range, now available as 5 mg and 10 mg oral capsules, a 25 mg/mL oral spray and a 25 mg/mL oily dropper solution, is ‘plant-derived’.
Manufactured under Health Products Regulatory Authority oversight at its EU-GMP facility in Athlone, Ireland, Dunbar’s product is a chemically defined, pharmacopoeia-grade active ingredient produced from plant starting material rather than through chemical synthesis.
The result is a single-molecule product that behaves like a conventional pharma compound, with predictable milligram dosing and minimal compositional variability, while sidestepping the cost and intellectual-property walls around the incumbent synthetic routes.
Dunbar, Ireland’s first EU GMP certified manufacturer of cannabinoid-derived active ingredients according to certification held in the EudraGMDP registry.
Beyond flower
In a recent press release, Leah Fletcher (Founder and CEO of Dunbar Pharma) said that many patients are unable or unwilling to inhale cannabis-based medicines. They should be able to access alternatives.
We can ensure a constant and reliable supply of dronabinol in oral formulations by manufacturing commercially at scale in Ireland according to EU GMP. This is how we are able to provide IPS Pharma, for example, with a consistent and reliable supply. This is the way cannabinoid treatment becomes a part of medicine and not a distinct category.
Leah Fletcher is the Founder and CEO of Dunbar Pharma
The announcement comes as a result of a noticeable shift towards pharma-grade formulations on European markets. In Germany where Dunbar made its entry earlier in 2026 the category that included dronabinol registered more statutory prescriptions over the course 2025 than cannabis flowers.
The company was founded based on the belief that cannabis’ growth outpaced pharmaceutical infrastructure. Speaking to MEDCAN24, Fletcher said Dunbar’s model was built around supplying ‘very, very standardised APIs’ into both the cannabis market and traditional pharma, working with select partners in each jurisdiction to meet local regulatory requirements.
The Athlone facility keeps testing, stability and R&D in-house and sits in the same industrial park as Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Alexion and Novartis.
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What Germany can teach us about the UK
Fletcher says regulators are more likely to support the switch than other alternatives. “It’s much easier for a regulator to say, ‘Well, make it be pharma,’ because the systems are in place for pharma.”
Ireland is ‘very, very good at pharma’, she added, having spent decades funding pharmaceutical infrastructure and, through Enterprise Ireland’s backing of Dunbar, is now extending that support into cannabinoid manufacturing. “They want jobs. They want to be able to access medicines. They want access. They want pharmaceuticals.
Fletcher claimed that the UK’s regulation route still lags behind more flexible markets such as Germany, which ultimately hurts patients. Paradoxically the UK’s stricter regulatory posture, intended to protect patients is now the constraint on what these patients can access.
“The flexibility in Germany tends offer more patient accessibility and better products for the patient than the UK,” she said.
UK Specials manufacturers must allocate 90 days to a patient-specific prescription and cannot compound in anticipation of demand, whereas German pharmacies operating under the country’s magisterial preparation route can ‘manufacture ahead of time once they know how many prescriptions they did last month and the last before.’
The UK does not easily transfer the stability data that is generated for the German markets, so the options available to London prescribers are closed.
Fletcher stated that “because the framework was written for Specials, and not cannabis”, we miss out on some really good things.
The UK launch lands ahead of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs’ expected review of medical cannabis, which Fletcher said she hopes will produce ‘more structure, more rigour, and clear guidelines for people supplying to the market.’
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