Matt McCoy 0:00

Welcome to the Give Back Health Podcast, where we explore how innovation, philanthropy, and bold leadership are shaping the future of healthcare right here in Canada. This podcast is brought to you by the Give Back Health Innovation Foundation. And this show spotlights the people and ideas that are turning research into real-world impact. So, Greg, what inspired you to launch GiveBack? And why do you believe now is such a critical moment for healthcare innovation in Canada?

Greg Wolfond 0:30

I think now is the elbows up moment for Canada. We have so many great scientists, and I know a lot of these scientists, and they all are doing amazing stuff that works in a lab and then it works in a mouse, and then there's no funding to get it to the next stage. And I just think with the billions we spend and the ranking we have of one, two in the world in research, it's almost a crime that we're not taking that stuff and commercializing it because we can do amazing at this.

Matt McCoy 0:51

Well, you spent your career building and scaling successful companies. What lessons from entrepreneurship are most relevant in solving this challenge right now?

Greg Wolfond 1:00

It's all teams. Any business is all about a team, right? You can take the best software developer and but you've got to pair them with project managers and salespeople and operations people to be successful at a business. You could get the best chip designer, but you need other people around them with system software and other software to build it. And you can take the best kidney doctor, one of the companies we're funding, who's amazing at what he does in his day job, and pair them with a physicist, and all of a sudden they can find, hey, here's a way to do ultrasound to see if that kidney is healthy at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time they can work on population scale, like I'm talking, not even a tenth the cost, you know, point one of the cost to be able to get this done on a population scale. But they have no funding. They need team members to help flush that out to be able to build the business and funding to drive their business forward. And so GiveBack steps in and says, hey, we can help you do that.

Matt McCoy 1:41

So as you mentioned, Canada does produce world-class research and you know, often the breakthrough technology, but a lot of those innovations never actually reach patents or they, you know, they leave Canada and get funded elsewhere. Do you think funding is the biggest challenge or any other challenges involved here? Like what is the reason this is not happening here in Canada?

Greg Wolfond 2:01

There's a bunch of challenges that Canada has. One of them for sure is when they're done the research and it works in the dish and it works in the mouse, getting the funding to de-risk that because the VCs and pharma aren't investing until it's proven, hey, this is going to work in a human. These trials cost tens, hundreds of millions of dollars. You've got to get it further. And there's no funding once you're done that study in the dish or in the mouse to get it to de-risk to the point where a VC or a big farmer will invest. So that's absolutely a big point. But we're also missing the next stage of funding. How do you get the $20 million and $40 million rounds? How do you get the $100 million rounds and keep it here? Because I, you know, the opportunity here is to build an industry around this where we make drugs cheaper for Canadians, where we make jobs happen in Canada, and we're actually getting cheaper drugs and selling to the entire world the great innovations that are coming out of Canada. Aaron Powell What do you think is the biggest thing preventing that funding from being in place right now? Aaron Powell There's a bunch. So we spend, I think in Canada somewhere between seven and ten billion dollars a year on research, but negligible amounts on commercialization. We should have a sovereign innovation fund that's saying, hey, we're helping to fund these things, we're giving grants to these companies, we're matching funds that others are coming in to help get over this risk gap so that VCs and others can come in. And we should have a Canada benefit covenant of some kind that says, hey, once I do that, in perpetuity, I want these drugs to be cheaper in Canada. I want those companies to stay in Canada. I'll fund you for the next stage of innovation that goes through. So there's a couple of things that we can do as a country, which is a fraction of what we spend today to make a big difference.

Matt McCoy 3:24

You often talk about turning great ideas into real-world outcomes. What separates innovations that create impact from those that never reach beyond the lab?

Greg Wolfond 3:34

In the end, it's team, right? All these things like we're working with scientists who are amazing in their field. As I said, whether they're a kidney doctor, a physicist, or someone working on small molecules that can help with depression, they can figure out how this works in a dish or how it works in the mouse, but how do I get it through FDA approval? How do I get the funding to get it to the next stage? How do I get it into a person? All that stuff is missing. So right now, give back's trying to help with the translational part to risk it. But we need others to come in and partner with us and match funds and make tax advantage so that others will invest in these kinds of technologies and really make a difference for Canada.

Matt McCoy 4:06

You've built and also backed as an investor a lot of successful teams. How do you determine the right team that's gonna make it?

Greg Wolfond 4:14

It's always a passion, right? You know, these scientists and every scientist we talk to in Canada, they're giving their life to make a difference, right? They're researching this disease and what can I do to make a difference on that disease. They're passionate about what they want, and passion's what's gonna do it. You need to put the team around them to take it from this passion and these findings into how do I get it in the clinical trial, how do I do it in humans, how do I manufacture the product, all of that. But those people exist and we can do that. There just hasn't been the will or the funds to help these people go to that next stage. And there hasn't been the pairing group that's bringing together some of the other skills that are needed to take these companies forward.

Matt McCoy 4:46

Give back takes a pretty unique approach to supporting healthcare innovation. How does the model work and what makes it different from traditional philanthropy?

Greg Wolfond 4:54

Yeah, I don't think it's different from traditional in that the philanthropist is giving to make a difference to whatever cause. With GiveBack, we believe that there's lots of people who care about specific diseases. You know, you care about because you have a family or friend who's got a spinal injury, or you have family or friends with Parkinson's or someone who has arthritis, and you want to give to a team that's gonna make a difference. It's actually gonna get something done, have a cure, or make that condition better. And so what GiveBack does is allows you to give your money to GiveBack and GiveBack can fund an investment in that team. They can build their company, they can get to clinical trials, they can prove it in clinical trials, and once it's done, it becomes a cure. The companies then have to give back to Canada and make it cheaper for Canada. And any win or profit that GiveBack makes on those shares, all of that goes back to be invested in the next company. So it just becomes a perpetual cycle.

Matt McCoy 5:38

You've built companies across several industries now. What excites you most about opportunities emerging within healthcare?

Greg Wolfond 5:45

I just think we're best at it. Like we're among the best in the world at the research. And when you're spending that many billions of dollars of research, why aren't we commercializing those pieces and making a difference? This isn't one of those industries that AI is going to run over. It takes people and smarts to figure out what is the next thing. How does this work in the dish? How does it work in the mouse? How do I get it ready to test it in humans and actually doing the clinical trials in humans? All this stuff is hard to do. And I think we could just be world-class at both the research and the commercialization of that research in Canada.

Matt McCoy 6:12

Talk to me about the downsides right now, because a lot of innovation that happens in Canada then you know migrates elsewhere to actually get funded and built into an enterprise. Tell me about like the opportunity costs. What are we leaving on the table right now, watching that happen?

unknown 6:26

Yeah.

Greg Wolfond 6:26

So I mean, so the downside of doing nothing is the innovation gets built. Some of the best stuff that comes out of our research gets licensed to a U.S. partner, pharma, and the U.S. pharma comes back and says, okay, it's this many thousand dollars a dose to go through. So we're paying through the nose. Our health costs are going like this because our population is aging and healthcare is getting more expensive. Our belief is we should be doing stuff here, like something, you know, a cure, a stem cell that can fix a spinal injury. We spend in Ontario, as an example, about $1.3 billion a year on 13,000 patients that have spinal injuries. It's tragic when it happens, but if we can fix a number of those, all of a sudden we bend that cost curve and we can take a billion dollars off the cost curve. That's a billion dollars that can get spent somewhere else. We have to be investing in this kind of research and then owning the companies here and getting a give back from those companies to Canada that we can then use on the next ones.

Matt McCoy 7:12

It's a good example. Are there any other examples or trends that you're seeing that make you excited about the future of healthcare in Canada?

Greg Wolfond 7:19

I just, you know, I've spent I've built a number of tech companies and spent a ton of time and went back and did a biochem degree. So now spending a bunch of time with these scientists who are figuring this out. And they're so passionate about what they do and their cures are so close, right? We live in this mantra in Canada where our scientists are publisher parish. They get their next money by getting a grant for the next thing they do. And I think what we need to do is we've got to bring together the business, the entrepreneurial folks with these folks and show them how we can become a business and actually get their science into humans and go further. And, you know, the downside of not doing it is the cost curve just continues to rise, right? STEM. If you don't fix the spinal thing, your cost just rises as more people happen. If you don't fix mental health and you have depression, you know, depression costs Ontario $5 billion a year. What is it worth to spend a little bit on some of these folks making small molecule drugs that will change it, making it work in Canada and then selling that to the world, much like we licensed out GLP1s and Nova Nordics made a fortune, why aren't we building that here and building the company here, licensing to the world, making money, and making it cheaper for Canadians to have these solutions? There's no reason other than it will.

Matt McCoy 8:21

That makes sense. So basically, if GiveBack achieves everything you hope it will over say the next decade, what do you think success looks like uh in real terms for patients, you know, for these companies, for Canada at large?

Greg Wolfond 8:33

Yeah, I think give back's only a part of it, but I think in the end you're gonna see a lot more money going into this translational work, taking stuff from the lab into humans. You're gonna see matching funds coming from governments, matching funds coming from foundations, other for-profit things coming in, and then building the companies here so we actually have an ecosystem of companies hiring more people and actually growing the industry to be one of the leading industries in Canada. What's one message you'd like every Canadian to hear about the opportunity we have to shape the future of healthcare innovation? Yeah, I think Canada is second to none on research. We just have to commercialize that research and own it here, and we can be a world leader.