Eighty-year-old Dr. Henry Lowe is a world-renowned Jamaican scientist, respected for his extensive research in the use of marijuana to treat cancer and other diseases.
Earlier this month, Flavocure Biotech, Dr. Lowe’s U.S.-based scientific research company, received approval from the U.S. Patent Office for a drug that treats glaucoma, as well as myopia (nearsightedness). The drug is a cannabis-based flavonoid, created for the prevention and treatment of certain ocular diseases and related disorders, and is administered orally.
This is the latest in a series of approvals received by Dr. Lowe’s firm for cannabis-related research, and is his 12th patent so far from the United States. He also is reported to have 10 patents pending in Jamaica, as well.
In April, the Asia-based Denning Growth Fund invested US$1.5 million into Dr. Lowe’s Flavocure Biotech. The company attracted the investment based on its advancements in the development of a cannabis-based pancreatic cancer drug. The investment will facilitate further research and take company’s drugs to market.
Dr. Lowe has earned worldwide acclaim for his focus on deriving high value health solutions from plants that grow in Jamaica, with a particular interest in lifestyle diseases such as cancer, diabetes, arthritis and HIV. His initial focus was on the Jamaican ball moss, an herb that usually grows on power lines. In late 2018, Dr. Lowe announced he had found cancer-fighting molecules in cannabis and in the moss that can treat prostate cancer.
He told a Jamaican newspaper, “We have made a lot of new strides in that area, in that we have done research and development, and we have, through cannabis, found some new molecules that can treat prostate cancer. Only recently we developed some data with a colleague from the University of Maryland for a drug developed for the treatment of prostate cancer. We are going to be moving this forward…this is going to be big.”
Dr. Lowe is also a highly accomplished entrepreneur, with several successful businesses under his belt.
A scholar as well, Dr. Lowe received prominent scholarships for all his degrees. His academic life began at the University of the West Indies, where he received his bachelor’s degree. He then went on to earn a master’s in Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Sydney in Australia, and a PhD at Manchester University in the UK. He would then go on to complete further post-doctoral studies in the U.S. at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Lowe worked in academia first at Excelsior high school, his alma mater, then the College of Arts, Science, and Technology (CAST) in Kingston. He would remain at CAST for 16 years before moving onto the Ministry of Energy where he helped the government mitigate the country’s severe energy crisis at the time. At the ministry, he would become the director and develop Jamaica’s first National Energy Policy and Management Plan. Dr. Lowe then helped establish the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment, and joined the Ministry of Agriculture.
In 1990, Dr. Lowe became the CEO of Blue Cross Jamaica, which was at the time the country’s leading health insurance company. He would eventually become the majority shareholder in Blue Cross before selling his shares to Sagicor, a local corporate heavyweight, in 2008.
By 1992, Dr. Lowe launched his first business, the EHF Group of Companies—a non-profit set up to improve the quality of life of Jamaicans—which is better known as the Environmental Health Foundation. As a non-profit, this organization cemented Dr. Lowe as a philanthropist. Through its commercial arm, the EHF Group also started several for-profits, including Pelican Publishers Ltd, Eden Garden Group of Companies, and Flavocure Biotech.
Dr. Lowe’s long list of awards include the Order of Distinction in 1982 by the Order of Jamaica in 2012—both from the Jamaican government. He was named the Observer Business Leader of the Year in 2006. In 2014, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Science & Innovation from the University of the Commonwealth Caribbean, and in 2017 he received the Marcus Garvey Lifetime Achievement Award from the Institute of Caribbean Studies.
Now well past what some would consider retirement age, Dr. Lowe continues to make a great impact in Jamaica by breaking barriers in the scientific arena, and as an astute scientist and businessman.
