The investments in these companies are for the discoveries that are mature enough to be commercialized. What CIHR does is fund the basic research, and we need that robust foundation of discovery.
Organizations like the Stem Cell Network build multidisciplinary teams from across Canada to move that research along the pipeline, through research and development and clinical testing, and bring it to the point where it can be commercialized. We fund projects that are hare-brained ideas that no one else will fund—such as the project that led to the cure for the patient Cate described—as a small catalyst grant or impact grant, and move it along all the way through to larger teams doing the research and development, all the way through to clinical testing.
We don't fund and forget. We manage these projects in live time. We're very different from the funding councils.