No, I was just finishing my Ph.D.; I hadn't quite finished.
So he had that idea. In the interview, I asked him what the future was—an idea, a publication...? He said, “What you make of it.” That's what his answer was. I was fortunate to be maybe naive and somewhat optimistic, and I took it on.
We started in 1971; this is now 40-some years ago. I built the building for the researcher/manufacturer in 1973. We started on the clinical trials in 1975 and got approval in 1980—so, in nine years. That's short in today's terms, but still, it was nine years. It led to what is now Cangene, which was at 800 employees, though there are 600 now—they have downsized a bit—in Winnipeg.
It led to many other spinoffs. I've been involved since then in 17 other companies, 12 of which exist today. I think six of them are biotech associate members, and so on.
So Dr. Chown, with his vision—knowing there was a problem with babies and that there was some research out there—led to this development.
The other story is about a professor at McMaster, Dr. Harley, one of the world's leading researchers. In Canada, he did research very early on to understand why cancer cells divide—about telomeres at the end of DNA.
He worked closely with two other researchers, one in New York, and I forget where the other one was, who won a Nobel prize for this. I'm not sure why Dr. Harley didn't win a Nobel prize, but he was involved in the initial publications that led to these Nobel prizes. This was in early 1991 or 1992.
In 1993, he and his entire research team were attracted to San Francisco to lead the research in a company called Geron, which was one of the first companies in the world to work on stem cell treatments. Again, they were the first in the world. The venture capital group from San Francisco attracted his entire team. I'm not aware of any commercial ventures out of that research in Canada. It's a huge commercial venture in San Francisco.
What are the messages? What is the difference?