============================================================
TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
============================================================
[00:00] SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:06] SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to Calgary's podcast with Mario Tanaguchi on Canada's podcast network.
[00:12] SPEAKER_01: Joining me today is Dr. Joseph Tucker, who is president and CEO of Magic Med Industries in Calgary.
[00:20] SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us today.
[00:22] SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me Mario. It's great to be here.
[00:23] SPEAKER_01: Okay, well let's start just by telling me a little bit about Magic Med, what it is and what you guys do.
[00:33] SPEAKER_00: Sure. Magic Med is one of these new companies in the psychedelics medicine space, which is this really cool new area that's just popped up really in the last year or so.
[00:43] SPEAKER_00: So almost it seems out of nowhere.
[00:46] SPEAKER_00: And basically the premise behind the whole sector is molecules that you've known about for ages that are hallucinogenic agents, you know, LSD or magic mushrooms or things like that.
[01:01] SPEAKER_00: But if used in a psychotherapy session can be an in the right setting can actually provide benefit for people suffering from a variety of mental health challenges.
[01:14] SPEAKER_00: So Magic Med, we're trying to take that to the next level.
[01:18] SPEAKER_00: We think magic mushrooms or LSD or XDC is a good starting point, but we all come from pharma background.
[01:26] SPEAKER_00: So our perspective is if you take that molecule, you modify it, make it better.
[01:32] SPEAKER_00: You can actually have something that's an even better pharmaceutical to treat the mental health challenges.
[01:37] SPEAKER_00: So that's what we're doing is we're modifying these hallucinogenic agents to make new and better drugs.
[01:43] SPEAKER_01: So what kind of areas of mental health are, are this being used for?
[01:51] SPEAKER_00: Well, so you know the core of it, the bulk of it, let's say is, are mostly what I would say mood related.
[01:57] SPEAKER_00: So anxiety, depression, SD, that kind of stuff.
[02:03] SPEAKER_01: And obviously that's, you know, not to make light of it, but obviously this is a growing area of concern in society today, particularly in the last year and a bit with the pandemic, right?
[02:18] SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, I mean, I think the pandemic has really, it's actually made it easier for a lot of people to admit that, you know, they're feeling stressed or that they're feeling anxious.
[02:28] SPEAKER_00: But it's, you know, this area of mental health is, it's one of the most prevalent, you know, challenges for society, right?
[02:35] SPEAKER_00: I mean, everybody, everybody, somebody in the family, a close friend that's, you know, had a, had a challenge with this or maybe even themselves, right?
[02:44] SPEAKER_00: It's, it's totally ubiquitous. Everybody struggles with this stuff.
[02:47] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So walk me through this in terms of, you know, the production of this, you know, where it's, where it's produced and where it goes from there and where it lands eventually.
[03:01] SPEAKER_00: Sure. Yeah. So when you started to do, I've seen production. I thought you meant, how do you manufacture the molecules? But I think maybe you mean that and, and a little bit more.
[03:10] SPEAKER_00: Yeah. So, yeah. So, I mean, these are, these are basically being treated as candidate drugs, right? Candidate pharmaceuticals.
[03:18] SPEAKER_00: So they have to be regulated by health Canada, the FDA, EMA, that kind of thing. So that means first off, because you're starting generally with post-ogenic agents, you need to have licensing from the government to allow you even to tinker with these things at all.
[03:36] SPEAKER_00: Yeah. And, and we do most of our licensing actually comes through our relationship with the University of Calgary, with professors there and biology and chemistry and faculty of medicine.
[03:49] SPEAKER_00: And, and we start with that, but then we go and we make these new molecules and then we have to take them through clinical trials. So it's, it's a whole big process, just like any kind of drug development.
[03:59] SPEAKER_01: And they end up like a regular pharmacy store, basically?
[04:05] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's the, that's the plan is to get these, to get these, you know, molecules that we're making, get them through clinical trials.
[04:13] SPEAKER_00: And then, yeah, ultimately, that's what we would like to see. We'd like to see them probably being marketed by some big pharma company that's licensed it from them.
[04:21] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[04:21] SPEAKER_00: And then, yeah, it's, it's on the shelf and a psychiatrist psychologist can prescribe these for their patients.
[04:28] SPEAKER_01: Okay. You know, obviously some people are going to go, whoa, wait a second, right?
[04:35] SPEAKER_01: You know, when you're talking about hallucinogenic stuff, how do you address that with people, you know, that, that may be concerned that say these drugs, you know, end up turning people going the wrong way.
[04:51] SPEAKER_00: Now, a really great question and it's, it's very interesting, Mario, that's actually right.
[04:56] SPEAKER_00: One of the central questions in this sector right now is, do you actually need the hallucinogenic experience?
[05:04] SPEAKER_00: Do you need the hallucination to have the benefit?
[05:08] SPEAKER_00: So quite a few folks, some of the originators of the sector have said, absolutely, if you don't have a hallucination, doesn't work.
[05:15] SPEAKER_00: But there's also a lot of scientists and new science coming out right now that's questioning that theory that's actually saying, well, if we block the hallucination, do you still get the benefit and the preliminary data seems to suggest, yeah, if you do it the right way, you can still get the benefit.
[05:34] SPEAKER_00: So I think what we're going to see is one of two streams in the future, you'll, or maybe both.
[05:40] SPEAKER_00: One, if the hallucination is required, the way it's administered is in an inclinic setting.
[05:47] SPEAKER_00: So you don't, you don't get a jar of shrooms that you take home with you.
[05:51] SPEAKER_00: You go into a clinic, you're there, there's a psychologist, a set guide, the whole bit, they control the room, they play the right music for you, and they take you through a session, it's very safe.
[06:02] SPEAKER_00: But you do go through the hallucination.
[06:04] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[06:04] SPEAKER_00: Or it turns out you don't need it, you can, and this is what we're trying to do, this is part of what we're hoping to be able to do at magic med is if you could knock off the hallucination, but keep all the rest of the benefit.
[06:17] SPEAKER_00: That's much better.
[06:19] SPEAKER_00: But I think at the end of the day, the society is, is actually reducing a lot of the stigma associated with this.
[06:25] SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we started to see things like health Canada, allowing people to use magic mushrooms to treat their anxiety and depression in certain settings.
[06:35] SPEAKER_00: So I think this stigma is being reduced as well.
[06:38] SPEAKER_01: You know, I, this jogged my memory, but I wrote a story within the past year, there's some company, retail sort of company based out of Vancouver that was going to open up all these spots.
[06:56] SPEAKER_01: Before that, so, so that people get the, and it's part of the psychotherapy and all that stuff.
[07:03] SPEAKER_01: So obviously it's an area trend that's growing, right, these days.
[07:09] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're already seeing clinics that administer ketamine, which is similar.
[07:15] SPEAKER_00: It's what they call the dissociative anesthetics.
[07:18] SPEAKER_00: So not exactly the same thing as a hallucinogenic agent, but it's pretty similar.
[07:23] SPEAKER_00: And those clinics already exist. Those molecules are already approved.
[07:27] SPEAKER_00: And so we are seeing a proliferation of those clinics.
[07:30] SPEAKER_00: And the people that own those clinics are saying, you know, we can't wait till this next crop of new molecules comes in and we'll be able to add that to our, you know, to our clinics.
[07:39] SPEAKER_01: Okay, super.
[07:41] SPEAKER_00: Just out of curiosity, how did you get involved in this?
[07:44] SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I've been a, so I'm a, I'm a native Calgary and did all my schooling here.
[07:51] SPEAKER_00: And I've been a guy that just kind of, how shall I say constantly getting fired doesn't sound good.
[08:02] SPEAKER_00: I'm the kind of guy that needs to create a new company all the time, because nobody will hire me so that I can hire myself.
[08:10] SPEAKER_00: So I've constantly been creating new new companies in this drug development space.
[08:16] SPEAKER_00: And I've been working with a couple of scientists out of the University of Calgary, Peter Fuccini and Jill Hegel, who are total leaders in the area of saying, can we go to natural molecules that come from mushrooms or plants?
[08:31] SPEAKER_00: And can we make them into better drugs?
[08:33] SPEAKER_00: So I've been working with them for eight years.
[08:36] SPEAKER_00: We originally were doing stuff with opiates.
[08:38] SPEAKER_00: We were working on making an opiate, you know, improved opiate system.
[08:43] SPEAKER_00: And then we were working on cannabinoids.
[08:45] SPEAKER_00: And we actually made another company, Willow Bioscizes, we took public two years ago.
[08:50] SPEAKER_00: And, and we saw what was going on in this psychedelic space.
[08:53] SPEAKER_00: And we thought, wow, you know, here's an opportunity to take exactly what we've been doing.
[08:58] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[08:59] SPEAKER_00: And make much better molecules in a really, really big mental health market.
[09:04] SPEAKER_00: So it was kind of a natural progression of what we've been doing for almost 10 years.
[09:08] SPEAKER_01: Now, I understand just recently, you partnered up with that company about a Pittsburgh named...
[09:17] SPEAKER_01: Cognistics.
[09:18] SPEAKER_01: How's it pronounced?
[09:19] SPEAKER_01: Cognistics.
[09:20] SPEAKER_01: Cognistics.
[09:21] SPEAKER_01: Okay, it's pronounced about the kind of strange, but tell me what that's there in the eye company, I understand, right?
[09:27] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
[09:28] SPEAKER_00: So we're really happy to have met them and to be working with them.
[09:32] SPEAKER_00: Because I didn't really mention it, but, you know, what we're doing is we're creating like a huge number of new molecules.
[09:40] SPEAKER_00: And they're all a little bit different.
[09:43] SPEAKER_00: And it's a really, really large number.
[09:45] SPEAKER_00: We want to find the very best one to use as drugs to go forward.
[09:49] SPEAKER_00: And we realized it's going to be way too difficult and take, you know, far too long.
[09:55] SPEAKER_00: If we try to manually test them all, we realized we needed some artificial intelligence to be able to piece through this, you know, it's very large number like 100 million potential drugs to find the best one.
[10:07] SPEAKER_00: So Cognistics is this group that we've met and, you know, they're, they're founding scientists is out of you pit.
[10:17] SPEAKER_00: And he's actually was one of the guys on the original IBM Watson team just to give you an idea of his pedigree.
[10:24] SPEAKER_00: So, but anyway, yeah, what they're doing for us is hugely helpful.
[10:28] SPEAKER_00: They're building our custom AI that allow us to pick through these molecules and, you know, find the very best ones.
[10:36] SPEAKER_00: And then also to expedite moving the molecules into clinical trials.
[10:41] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the AI that they're building for us is, I mean, it's custom.
[10:44] SPEAKER_00: It's perfect. It's just what we need.
[10:45] SPEAKER_00: And they're really great team to work with.
[10:47] SPEAKER_01: Wow. Very cool.
[10:49] SPEAKER_01: When do you expect to be in the market with us?
[10:54] SPEAKER_00: You mean when are these drugs going to be actually, you know,
[10:58] SPEAKER_00: yeah, given to patients, these take a long time.
[11:01] SPEAKER_00: You're, you're always looking seven to 10 years.
[11:04] SPEAKER_00: It's a long road, but it's worth it, right?
[11:07] SPEAKER_00: You need to do it to prove that the molecules are safe, but it'll be a while before these are on the shelves.
[11:12] SPEAKER_01: Okay. Let me ask you a few questions.
[11:16] SPEAKER_01: Joseph, just about being an entrepreneur, you know, when you kind of alluded to that earlier, what do you like about being an entrepreneur?
[11:27] SPEAKER_00: Well, I have to say it's the the freedom to essentially dream something up and then make it happen.
[11:35] SPEAKER_00: That's, that's what makes you know, the hair stand up on my, on my arms when I say it.
[11:41] SPEAKER_00: And kind of right, you just sort of envision this is an ideal company.
[11:45] SPEAKER_00: This is a great business.
[11:47] SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't exist and then to go and make it happen.
[11:51] SPEAKER_00: So that, that freedom and that, you know, that ability to create something that was just in your mind and then turn it into something real.
[11:58] SPEAKER_00: That's, that's what I love about it.
[11:59] SPEAKER_01: Where have you found, say inspiration, I guess, to be an entrepreneur like, yeah, do you have a family background?
[12:10] SPEAKER_01: Oh, that did you read a book and the light bulb went off?
[12:15] SPEAKER_00: No, it's being unemployed is that's what inspires me.
[12:23] SPEAKER_00: It really happens with a lot of it, especially now, right?
[12:27] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, honestly, you know, for me, there's, I don't know if I'm, if I'm too confident or I'm following myself or something, there's something about me that makes people not want to hire me.
[12:41] SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it is.
[12:44] SPEAKER_00: And so, or at least maybe nobody will hire me for the job I want.
[12:48] SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's it.
[12:49] SPEAKER_00: So honestly, as I said a moment ago, I'm a, you know, a serial entrepreneur out of necessity.
[12:56] SPEAKER_00: I need to create a company so that I have something to do.
[13:00] SPEAKER_00: Honestly, that's where it comes from.
[13:01] SPEAKER_00: I'm not inspired by anybody I know.
[13:04] SPEAKER_01: And when you, when you look back at things of being an entrepreneur, do you remember anything that struck you in terms of advice given to you by someone?
[13:14] SPEAKER_01: Or maybe even something you read in a book or saw some place that really resonated with you?
[13:24] SPEAKER_00: No.
[13:27] SPEAKER_01: Did you read any, did you read all any of those kind of business like books or entrepreneur books?
[13:33] SPEAKER_00: I sure have. Yeah. And I remember one that really struck me as being completely off target for me in the drug.
[13:44] SPEAKER_00: So I'm, you know, in the biotech, pharma industry, there is some of it was quite hot a few years ago.
[13:51] SPEAKER_00: I forget exactly what it was, but it was about the idea behind it.
[13:56] SPEAKER_00: I've already blanked it because it annoyed me so much.
[13:58] SPEAKER_00: The idea was get straight to the beta and start selling it and essentially use your customer to help you design your final product.
[14:09] SPEAKER_00: And I forget the name of it right now.
[14:12] SPEAKER_00: Very popular. Everybody was talking about it.
[14:14] SPEAKER_00: And I think that works fine if you're selling apps or, you know, software or something where there's no regulations.
[14:21] SPEAKER_00: But if you're creating a new drug where you have 15 years worth of regulations, you know, it doesn't work like that kind of scenario.
[14:30] SPEAKER_00: So I have some negative examples.
[14:33] SPEAKER_01: No, I hear you.
[14:34] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it's being an entrepreneur is not an easy job.
[14:40] SPEAKER_01: Obviously, like, what do you think?
[14:43] SPEAKER_01: What do you think some of the best qualities are of a non-trapener?
[14:50] SPEAKER_01: Like, is there common thread there that indicates, you know, where success can be found in the entrepreneur?
[14:59] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I absolutely think so.
[15:01] SPEAKER_00: I would say the number one thing in my opinion is resilience, right?
[15:07] SPEAKER_00: And I would also say not being risk averse.
[15:12] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, there's, what's that there's that song out there?
[15:16] SPEAKER_00: It's like, I think the band, Chamba Wamba, I get knocked down, but I get up again.
[15:21] SPEAKER_00: You're never going to keep me down.
[15:23] SPEAKER_00: Like, that's the theme song of the entrepreneur, right?
[15:26] SPEAKER_00: You're just like constantly getting knocked down. You just get up.
[15:28] SPEAKER_00: Get knocked down. Get up.
[15:30] SPEAKER_00: Like, so that, that I think is number one.
[15:33] SPEAKER_00: And I think number two is being willing to put yourself in a situation that you're uncomfortable.
[15:39] SPEAKER_00: Things that, you know, for me, one of the biggest things is public speaking.
[15:48] SPEAKER_00: Right? And so, you know, you just going to have to put yourself in those situations until it doesn't bother you anymore.
[15:54] SPEAKER_00: I think those are a couple of big things.
[15:56] SPEAKER_01: You know, when you mentioned that about falling, it reminded me, I don't know if you're basketball, a fan or not, but remember,
[16:03] SPEAKER_01: the superstar Michael Jordan, and he had a famous comment, or, quote, regarding that about how everybody talks about all the shots that he's made.
[16:13] SPEAKER_01: But nobody realizes how many shots he missed, you know, getting to that point, right?
[16:19] SPEAKER_00: And Bay Bruth was famous for not only having the highest number of home runs, but also having the highest number of strikeouts.
[16:26] SPEAKER_01: You know what? And that's the same thing. Reggie Jackson, Reggie Jackson, the same thing, right? Mr. October, known for his,
[16:33] SPEAKER_01: not going to motor the ballpark, but, you know, he's right up there in terms of the strikeout list, right?
[16:40] SPEAKER_01: And, yeah, we're springing. We're springing for the fans.
[16:44] SPEAKER_00: Sorry, we got that line about you miss every shot you don't take.
[16:49] SPEAKER_00: Something like that, right? So it's, yeah, it's, it's keep going, right? Don't, don't.
[16:54] SPEAKER_00: And you know what I think that comes from is, I think it comes from a belief in yourself.
[16:59] SPEAKER_00: If you believe, yeah, you're going to get there, then a million people can tell you you're a fool and it doesn't matter.
[17:06] SPEAKER_00: Because you just know that guy's wrong and you keep going.
[17:09] SPEAKER_01: All right, thanks. Super. Well, thanks a lot, Joseph, for joining us today.
[17:14] SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it, Mario. A lot of fun to be here.
[17:16] SPEAKER_01: Okay, you bet. That was Dr. Joseph Tucker, president and CEO of Magic Med Industries in Calgary.
[17:23] SPEAKER_01: This has been Calgary's podcast with Mario Tonoguzzi on Canada's podcast network.
[17:29] SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us today.
