Cannabics Pharmaceuticals Inc (OTCMKTS:CNBX) Has A Big Few Months Ahead Of It

Cannabics Pharmaceuticals Inc (OTCMKTS:CNBX) has been a real swing stock over the last few weeks. The company ran form less than a dollar a share at the beginning of February to close to $6.5 a piece on February 21. A pretty sharp correction last week saw these highs depreciate to $3 a piece, but the correction eased off a little heading into the weekly close, and Cannabics is up more than 20% mid session on Monday.Management put out a press release in response to the action, basically highlighting the fact that it recognizes the swings in PPS, and the accompanying run up in volume, but outside of this recognition, doesn’t have any more information as to what's driving the stock, or what's next.The release acknowledging the action did allude to a near term catalyst as being a potential interest driver – a catalyst that we highlighted as part of our recent coverage of the stock. In light of the management communication, then, and with what looks to be a decent bounce offering a corrective floor for the company, let's revisit Cannabics in an attempt to form a medium term bias.So as we've said, the company has developed a diagnostics technology that is reportedly positioned to revolutionize the way physicians identify disease in cancer patients, and gauge disease progression once identification has occurred. The technology is rooted in using cannabinoids as therapy for cancer patients. The proprietary technology is pretty opaque in terms of MOA (management is keeping its cards pretty close to its chest with regards to how it works) but from the available info, we know it’s a liquid biopsy technology. A liquid biopsy is a test done on a sample of blood to look for cancer cells from a tumor that are circulating in the blood or for pieces of DNA from tumor cells that are in the blood. They are used already, but Cannabics's twist on the current usage is to tweak them so as they not only identify cancer cell fragments, but they then use this identification to point towards a cannabinoid based therapy. The therapies that the diagnostic side of the equation point towards, of course, are Cannabics's proprietary treatments; at least, that's the long term business plan.The catalyst we referenced a little earlier relates to a commercialization strategy for the diagnostics platform. The company put out a press release on February 6 detailing the fact that it is on track to start testing patients with its diagnostics asset at the beginning of March. As part of this rollout, the company expects to have give patients across a host of countries, including Canada, Europe, the USA and its native Israel, access to its treatments. This widespread access is the key to this development being a volume driver – the company is one of the first to bring a complimentary cannabis treatment/diagnostics model to the market, and against a backdrop of large scale interest increase in the cannabis space as a whole, there's plenty of speculative volume looking to fill.We expect this speculative volume will continue to flow into Cannabics throughout the remainder of this quarter, and beyond, as the rollout kicks off.So that's the upside. There's risk here, and it's not insignificant. The company had just short of $300,000 cash on hand at November 30, and management expects to incur more than $1 million in expenses during 2017. That's a more than $700,000 shortfall across the next ten or eleven months alone. This shortfall is going to be need to be met, and it is shareholders that are going to have to bear the brunt of it (likely with a dilutive capital raise or two).With that said, we've seen how the company can run even against this shortfall, and so long as management can deliver on the operational side of things, then the risk should be mitigated.We will be updating our subscribers as soon as we know more. For the latest updates on CNBX, sign up below!Disclosure: We have no position in CNBX and have not been compensated for this article.