Tag Archives: John Montalbano

Avo Media, Science Telephone, and a Canadian COVID-19 billionaire scientist

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I’ll start off with the COVID-19 billionaire since I imagine that excites the most interest.

AbCellera billionaire

No less an authority than the business magazine Forbes has produced a list of COVID-19 billionaires in its December 23, 2020 article (Meet The 50 Doctors, Scientists And Healthcare Entrepreneurs Who Became Pandemic Billionaires In 2020) by Giacomo Tognini (Note: Links have been removed),

Nearly a year after the first case of Covid-19 was reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, the world could be nearing the beginning of the end of a pandemic that has killed more than 1.7 million people. Vaccination for Covid-19 is underway in the United States and the United Kingdom, and promising antibody treatments could help doctors fight back against the disease more effectively. Tied to those breakthroughs: a host of new billionaires who have emerged in 2020, their fortunes propelled by a stock market surge as investors flocked to companies involved in the development of vaccines, treatments, medical devices and everything in between.

Altogether, Forbes found 50 new billionaires in the healthcare sector in 2020. …

Carl Hansen

Net worth: $2.9 billion

Citizenship: Canada

Source of wealth: AbCellera

Hansen is the CEO and cofounder of Vancouver-based AbCellera, a biotech firm that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify the most promising antibody treatments for diseases. He founded the company in 2012. Until 2019 he also worked as a professor at the University of British Columbia, but shifted to focus full-time on AbCellera. That decision seems to have paid off, and Hansen’s 23% stake earned him a spot in the billionaire club after AbCellera’s successful listing on the Nasdaq on December 11. The U.S. government has ordered 300,000 doses of bamlanivimab, an antibody AbCellera discovered in partnership with Eli Lilly that received FDA approval as a Covid-19 treatment in November [2020].

…

Hansen was a professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC) where he founded AbCellera. From https://innovation.ubc.ca/about/news/spin-company-abcelleras-antibody-discovery-leads-covid-19-treatment (Note: A link has been removed),

AbCellera, a local biotechnology company founded at UBC, has developed a method that can search immune responses more deeply than any other technology. Using a microfluidic technology developed at the Michael Smith Laboratories, advanced immunology, protein chemistry, performance computing, and machine learning, AbCellera is changing the game for antibody therapeutics.

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I believe a great deal of research that is commercialized was initially funded by taxpayers and I cannot recall any entrepreneurs here in Canada or elsewhere acknowledging that help in a big way. Should you be able to remember any comments of that type, please do let me know in the Comments.

Just prior to this financial bonanza, AbCellera was touting two new board members, John Montalbano on Nov. 18, 2020 and Peter Thiel on Nov. 19, 2020.

Here’s a bit about Mr. Montalbano from a Nov. 18, 2020 AbCellera news release (Note: A link has been removed),

November 18, 2020 – AbCellera, a technology company that searches, decodes, and analyzes natural immune systems to find antibodies that can be developed to prevent and treat disease, today announced the appointment of John Montalbano to its Board of Directors. Mr. Montalbano will serve as the Chair of the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors.

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Mr. Montalbano is Principal of Tower Beach Capital Ltd. and serves on the boards of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Aritzia Inc., and the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. His previous appointments include the former Vice Chair of RBC Wealth Management and CEO of RBC Global Asset Management (RBC GAM). When Mr. Montalbano retired as CEO of RBC GAM in 2015, it was among the largest 50 asset managers worldwide with $370 billion under management and offices in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong.

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Montalbano has been on this blog before in a Nov. 4, 2015 posting. If you scroll down to the subsection “Justin Trudeau and his British Columbia connection,” you’ll see mention of Montalbano’s unexpected exit as member and chair of UBC’s board of governors.

The next board member to hop on the proverbial path to riches was announced in a Nov. 19, 2020 AbCellera news release,

AbCellera, a technology company that searches, decodes, and analyzes natural immune systems to find antibodies that can be developed to prevent and treat disease, today announced the appointment of Peter Thiel to its Board of Directors.

“Peter has been a valued AbCellera investor and brings deep experience in scaling global technology companies,” said Carl Hansen, Ph.D., CEO of AbCellera. “We share his optimistic vision for the future, faith in technological progress, and long-term view on company building. We’re excited to have him join our board and look forward to working with him over the coming years.”

Mr. Thiel is a technology entrepreneur, investor, and author. He was a co-founder and CEO of PayPal, a company that he took public before it was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. Mr. Thiel subsequently co-founded Palantir Technologies in 2004, where he continues to serve as Chairman. As a technology investor, Mr. Thiel made the first outside investment in Facebook, where he has served as a director since 2005, and provided early funding for LinkedIn, Yelp, and dozens of technology companies. He is a partner at Founders Fund, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has funded companies including SpaceX and Airbnb.

“AbCellera is executing a long-term plan to make biotech move faster. I am proud to help them as they raise our expectations of what’s possible,” said Mr. Thiel.

…

Some Canadian business journalists got very excited over Thiel’s involvement in particular. Perhaps they were anticipating this December 10, 2020 AbCellera news release announcing an initial public offering. Much money seems to have been made not least for Mr. Montalbano, Mr. Thiel, and Mr. Hansen.

As for Mr. Thiel and taxes, I don’t know for certain but can infer that he’s not a big fan from this portion of his Wikipedia entry,

…

Thiel is an ideological libertarian,[108] though more recently he has espoused support for national conservatism[109] and criticized libertarian attitudes towards free trade[110] and big tech.[109]

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My understanding is that libertarians object to taxes and prefer as little government structure as possible.

In any event, it seems that COVID-19 has been quite the bonanza for some people. If you’re curious you can find out more about AbCellera here.

Onto Avo Media and how it has contributed to the AbCellera story.

Avo Media, The Tyee, and Science Telephone

Vancouver (Canada)-based Avo Media describes itself this way on its homepage,

We make documentary, educational, and branded content.

We specialize in communicating science and other complex concepts in a clear, engaging way.

I think that description boils down to videos and podcasts. There’s no mention of AbCellera as one of their clients but they do list The Tyee, which in a July 1, 2020 posting (The Vancouver Company Turning Blood into a COVID Treatment: A Tyee Video) by Mashal Butt hosts a video about AbCellera,

The world anxiously awaits a vaccine to end the pandemic. But having a treatment could save countless lives in the meantime.

This Tyee video explains how Vancouver biotech company AbCellera, with funding from the federal government, is racing to develop an antibody-based therapy treatment as quickly as possible.

Experts — immunologist Ralph Pantophlet at Simon Fraser University, and co-founder and COO of AbCellera Véronique Lecault — explain what an antibody treatment is and how it can protect us from COVID-19.

…

It is not a cure, but it can help save lives as we wait for the cure.

This video was made in partnership with Vancouver’s Avo Media team of Jesse Lupini, Koby Michaels and Lucas Kavanagh.

It’s a video with a good explanation of AbCellera’s research. Interestingly, the script notes that the Canadian federal government gave the company over $175M for its COVID-19 work.

Why The Tyee?

While Avo Media is a local company, I notice that Jessica Yingling is listed in the final credits for the video. Yingling founded Little Dog Communications, which is based in both California and Utah. If you read the AbCellera news releases, you’ll see that she’s the media contact.

Is there a more unlikely media outlet to feature a stock market star, which probably will be making billions of dollars from this pandemic, than The Tyee? Politically, its ideology could be described as the polar opposite to libertarian ideology.

I wonder what the thought process was for the media placement and how someone based in San Diego (check out her self description on this Twitter feed @jyingling) came up with the idea?

Science Telephone

Avo Media’s latest project seems to be a podcast series, Science Telephone (this link is to the Spotify platform). Here’s more about the series and the various platforms where episodes can be found (from the Avo Media, Our Work, Science Telephone webpage) ,

Science Telephone is a new podcast that tests how well the science holds up when comedians get their hands onto it

Laugh while you learn, as the classic game of telephone is repurposed for scientific research. Each episode, one scientist explains their research to a comedian, who then has to explain it to the next comedian, and so on until it’s almost unrecognizable. See what sticks and what changes, with a rotating cast of brilliant scientists and hysterical comedians.

See a preview of the show below, or visit www.sciencetelephone.com to subscribe or listen to past episodes.

Science telephone is available on all the usual podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts

I have included the Science Telephone preview here,

As we move towards the end of this year and this pandemic, it’s time to enjoy a little science comedy.

Science and the new Canadian cabinet

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Justin Trudeau, Canada’s new Prime Minister was sworn in this morning (Nov. 4, 2015). He announced his new cabinet which holds 30 or 31 ministers (reports conflict), 15 of whom are women.

As for my predictions about how science would be treated in the new cabinet, I got it part of it right. Navdeep Singh Bains was named Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. I believe it’s the old Industry Canada ministry and it seemed the science portfolio was rolled into that ‘new’ ministry name as I suggested in my Nov. 2, 2015 posting.  (I thought it would be Industry and Science.)  However, there is also a Minister of Science, Kirsty Duncan. This represents a promotion of sorts for the science portfolio since it was previously considered a junior ministry as signified by the  title ‘Minister of State (Science and Technology)’.

It appears science is on the Liberal agenda although how they’re going to resolve two ministers and ministries having science responsibilities should be interesting. At the top level, I imagine it’s going to be split into applied science or commercial science (Innovation) as opposed to basic science or fundamental science (Science). The problem in these situations is that there’s a usually a grey area.

Moving on, if there’s anything that’s needs to be done quickly within the science portfolios, it’s the reinstatement of the mandatory long form census. Otherwise, there’s no hope of including it as part of the 2016 census. This should induce a sigh of relief across the country from the business community and provincial and municipal administrators who have had some planning and analysis problems due to the lack of reliable data from the 2011 census and its mandated, by then Prime Minister Stephen Harper, voluntary long form census.

***ETA Nov. 6, 2015: A day after the cabinet announcement, there was an announcement reinstating the mandatory long form census about which David Bruggeman provides an update  in a Nov. 5, 2015 posting on his Pasco Phronesis blog (Note: Links have been removed),

He [Justin Trudeau] also announced his cabinet, and his government announced that it would restore the mandatory long-form census.  I’ll focus on the cabinet, but the census decision is a big deal, especially with the next one scheduled for 2016. The official list of the top tier Cabinet appointments is online.

The census decision was announced by the new Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, MP Navdeep Bains.  Minister Bains was returned to Parliament in this year’s election, having served previously in Parliament from 2004-2011.  His training is in finance and his non-Parliamentary experience has been in financial analysis.  …

If you have the time, do read David’s post he includes more detailed descriptions of the new ‘science’ cabinet appointees. And, back to the original text of this posting where I highlight two of the ‘science’ appointments.***

As for the two new ‘science’ ministers, Kirsty Duncan and Navdeep Singh Bains there’s this from the Nov. 4, 2015 cabinet list on the Globe & Main website,

Navdeep Singh Bains
[Member of Parliament {MP} for] Mississauga-Malton, Ontario

Innovation, science and economic development

Former accountant at the Ford Motor Company of Canada. Former professor at Ryerson University’s management school. Entered federal politics in Mississauga in 2004.

Kirsty Duncan
[MP] Etobicoke North, Ontario

Science

Medical geographer and former professor at the University of Windsor and University of Toronto. Has been a Liberal MP since 2008.

For those who don’t know, Etobicoke (pronounced e [as in etymology] toh bi coh), is considered a part of the city of Toronto.

There is more information about this new government in the form of a PDF listing the new Cabinet committees and their membership. I’m not sure about the protocol but it would have been nice to see Elizabeth May, MP and leader of the Green Party, listed as a member of the Cabinet Committee on Environment, Climate Change and Energy (there were three petitions asking she be named Environment Minister according to an Oct. 20, 2015 news item by Lisa Johnson for CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] news online). Perhaps she’ll be on a Parliamentary committee concerned with these issues.

More predictions

Buoyed by my almost successful prognostication, I’m going to add another couple to the mix.

I think there will be the appointment of a Chief Science Advisor (likely answering to the Prime Minister or Prime Minister’s Office) and while some might think Ted Hsu would be a good choice, I suspect (sadly) he would be considered too partisan a choice. A physicist by training, he was a Liberal Member of Parliament and the party’s science and technology critic in the recently dissolved 41st Parliament of Canada from June 2, 2011 to August 15, 2015. However, should Prime Minister Justin Trudeau choose to appoint a Parliamentary Science Officer after appointing a Chief Science Advisor to the government, Hsu might be considered a very good choice given his experience as both scientist and parliamentarian. (As I understand it, a Parliamentary Science Officer, as modeled by the UK system, is someone who gives science advice to Members of Parliament who may request such advice when dealing with bills that contain science policy or require a better understanding of science, e.g. an energy bill, when debating and voting on the measure.)

Justin Trudeau and his British Columbia connection

Amusingly, the University of British Columbia (UBC) is touting the fact that Trudeau graduated from there with an undergraduate degree in Education. From a Nov. 4, 2015 UBC news release (received in my email),

The University of British Columbia congratulates Justin Trudeau, who earned a bachelor of education from UBC in 1998, on becoming Prime Minister of Canada today.

“It is not every day that a UBC alumnus achieves Canada’s highest office,” said Interim President Martha Piper. “As UBC celebrates its Centennial year, Mr. Trudeau’s accomplishment will serve as a prominent marker in the history of our university and count among the highest achievements of our more than 300,000 alumni.”

Trudeau is the first UBC graduate to be elected prime minister and joins fellow alumni prime ministers Kim Campbell (BA’69, LLB’83) and John Turner (BA’49) who were appointed upon securing their party leadership.

UBC would also like to congratulate alumna Jody Wilson-Raybould (LLB’99), who was appointed Minster of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, and all the other cabinet ministers appointed today.

“UBC looks forward to working with Prime Minister Trudeau and his cabinet in the coming months and continuing the strong dialogue UBC has enjoyed with our partners in Ottawa,” said Piper.

This is only amusing if you know that UBC is trying desperately to distance itself from a recent scandal where Arvind Gupta, president, stepped down (July 2015) from his position at the university only one year into his term for reasons no one will disclose. While the timing (the news release was distributed late on a Friday afternoon) and secrecy seemed suspicious, the scandal aspect developed when the chair of the UBC Board of Governors, John Montalbano called a faculty member to complain about a blog posting where she speculated about some of the pressures that may have been brought to bear on Gupta. Her subsequent posting about Montalbano’s phone call and senior faculty response excited media interest leading eventually into an investigation into Montalbano’s behaviour and charges that he was interfering with academic freedom. Recently exonerated (Oct. 15, 2015), Montalbano resigned from the board, while UBC admitted it had failed to support and protect academic freedom. Interesting, non?