This is a fantastic question.
Yes, actually Canada has strengths in those alternatives to antibiotics, to antimicrobials. Phage therapy was developed by Félix d'Herelle, a French Canadian researcher. He developed it in Paris, but he was from Canada. That was the first therapy in the pre-antibiotic era, where they were using phages, which are viruses against bacteria. Then when antibiotics came along, this was less popular, but now it's coming back. Actually, we have some major strengths in Canada on phages.
It's the same thing for the microbiome. This is all the bacteria that we have in our body. Most of the bacteria that we have are good bacteria and they're helping us. How do we make this equilibrium between the good bacteria and the potential bad bacteria?
There are many approaches, both in veterinary medicine and in human medicines, to use a more ecological approach. I think the best example, and everybody has heard about it, is a stool transplant for recurrent Clostridium difficile infection. It's not antibiotics. The reason for a stool transplant function is that you provide a lot of good bacteria and now there can be this equilibrium and then people can get rid of Clostridium difficile.
Yes, we are funding and we are interested in going to alternatives. We recognize the importance of developing new molecules because we will need them, but we also have to look at alternatives to antibiotics.