Truica, born and raised in Romania, came to Kingston in 2008 after completing her PhD and post-doctoral studies at Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal.
“When Novelis moved its Research Centre to Atlanta, GA, in 2011, I had a tough decision to make: to accept the job offer in Atlanta or to stay,” Truica shared.
We wanted for him to keep his language proficiency, especially in French, and Kingston and the French community here offered that opportunity,” she said.
He discussed with Truica the challenges that Licensed Producers face regarding cannabis microbial contamination, and the fact that many sterilization methods, such as autoclaving, irradiation with gamma rays or with ultraviolet radiation, can cause harm to the medical compounds in cannabis, namely cannabinoids and terpenes.
Duchesne was searching for an alternative, which led me to the idea that a cold plasma process can be developed specifically for the purpose of sterilizing cannabis flowers without damaging their therapeutic properties,” said Truica.
Medicinal cannabis is currently accepted in many countries and is being used as a therapy to ease pain, chemotherapy-induced nausea and anorexia in cancer and HIV-1 patients.
“Our technology and equipment effectively sterilize cannabis flowers without side-effects to their quality, or therapeutic properties.
Truica explained the cold plasma sterilization method.
Through this program, Truica said CPG was able to access many great resources, from Queen’s Partnerships and Innovation , Launch Lab, the Southeastern Ontario Angel Network, and St.
Access to all these local resources and the entrepreneur community has made it possible for CPG to achieve many important milestones on the path to product development and commercialization, overcoming challenges of limited resources and the difficult times of the pandemic, she shared.
“We hope to change that in the near future as Cold Plasma Group grows and additional scientists or engineers are needed.