FoundHER Revolutionizing Canine Cancer Care

“I often say "Trust your gut.” And what I mean is tune in to that inner wisdom. It might be telling you to take a risk, to pivot your career, to pursue that crazy idea you had when you were a freshman. It might feel scary, but that's often where the magic happens. And remember, success isn't just about the bottom line. It's about feeling good about the work you put out.” - Christina Lopes

Christina Lopes is the CEO and co-founder of the One Health Company, whose flagship product, FidoCure, uses AI and genomic sequencing to provide personalized treatments for pet dogs with cancer and accelerates the development of lifesaving cancer drugs for humans. Under Christina’s leadership FidoCure has expanded into over 1,350 veterinary clinics around the world and treated more than 5,000 pet dogs with cancer. In partnership with Stanford University’s AI Health leadership, Christina has built the world’s largest and most comprehensive canine cancer dataset, which consists of over 2 billion data points collected from patients in real world environments. Christina has co-authored peer reviewed research in leading scientific journals including Nature Precision Oncology that validate FidoCure’s personalized cancer treatment efficacy by up to 3X survival times, identify novel indications for existing cancer drugs, and accelerate the development of new cancer drugs via new insights into genomics. Christina’s work has been featured in the Washington Post, WIRED, STAT, The Times, and many other media outlets around the world. Previously, Christina was Managing Director at Cerberus Capital ($50B AUM) and helped create new financial asset classes in emerging markets. Christina is a graduate of Columbia University, a Young Global Leader at the Davos World Economic Forum, and an Inc. Magazine top 100 female founder. She is a Y-Combinator founder and is backed by leading investment firms such as Andreessen Horowitz and Lerer Hippeau. She served as Advisory Board Director to International Planned Parenthood for the Western Hemisphere, which provides 30M health services annually and has previously participated in the United Nations Commission for the Status of Women. Christina is originally from Brazil and now lives in Palo Alto, CA with her two and four legged family.

1. You’ve had a diverse career from working in finance to lecturing at Columbia. How have these experiences shaped your approach to leading a company focused on advancing veterinary care for dogs with cancer?

I always worked in emerging markets finance, which means working with countries that are developing economies where I was bringing resources like capital, technology, and people. My lectures at Columbia matched my work. While that may look very different from what we do at FidoCure, three areas correlate directly. Firstly, we were always “category creating” or in more ‘finance speak,’ we were creating new asset classes (i.e. we created the Brazilian protein sector, by bringing together many farmers to raise more capital at better terms for the farmers). The similarity here is great from the point of view of identifying an unmet need and a novel solution. In the case of FidoCure, oncology is a vast unmet need for humans and pets. We have a first-in-class approach to leverage data and innovation on both sides of the leash, starting first helping our beloved pets which timing-wise is aligned with the global cultural shift of the ‘humanization of pets.’

Second, I always had to generate novel data sets to make the best financial bets and trades in emerging markets finance. For example, in one infrastructure deal, we needed to create the data set for future electricity for an entire country because that data just didn’t exist. So we called power plants locally and built the data set, which completely bottoms up. The similarity here is that we are intentionally creating a novel data set, in this case, in canine cancer. However, now we can leverage AI and cutting-edge machine learning versus traditional statistics, which is what I used in finance. The impact of a large, well-structured data set with AI is massive. This is just the dawn of the golden age of bio and AI. 

Last, but not least, the work had a strong ‘mission’ and impact aspect, where we were genuinely helping countries and the people in those economies have access to better healthcare and other unmet needs. While animal health oncology may seem very far from my experience, it’s a culmination of building up the courage to identify large unmet needs that the world has not properly categorized as an ‘asset class.’ I got here via my family and particularly my dad’s cancer journey in combination with many family dogs’ cancer journeys.

2. FidoCure’s mission is to eradicate canine cancer and improve the quality of life for dogs with cancer. What are some of the key challenges you’ve faced in achieving this mission, and how have you overcome them?

The challenges are as complex as the disease itself. One of our biggest hurdles was convincing veterinarians to embrace precision medicine. Many were skeptical at first – "Why change what we've always done?"

We tackled this by speaking their language. Our team comprises several clinician scientists who could help translate cutting-edge precision medicine to veterinary professionals. Like human health, the standards are high since lives are at stake and veterinarians have a license. Our best moves were to 1) publish in high-impact journals like Nature Precision Oncology, alongside Stanford AI for Health leadership; and 2) create a Scientific Advisory Board with the world leaders in cancer, from the Board of MIT and Harvard which leads in cancer genetics on both sides of the leash, to former medical leadership of the American Cancer Society. The goal here was to ensure that we have the very best looking under the hood checking our data quality and co-authoring with us the 20-plus papers and posters we have published.

3. FidoCure Veterinary Team Blog shares the latest in veterinary oncology research and FidoCure scientific and clinical updates from their team of experts and advisors. What success stories from FidoCure’s treatment of canine cancer patients stand out to you the most, and how do these stories influence your vision for the company’s future?

Every time I read our Veterinary Team Blog, it reminds me why FidoCure is so important, as we are mission-driven to improve the last mile of care for our beloved pets. We had this terrier, Sammy – she came to us with an aggressive form of lung cancer. Her family was told she had weeks left, or what we often hear about cancer in pets: that cancer equals a death sentence. Our mission is to transform cancer from a death sentence to a second chance at life, and we are realizing this mission. Through our tumor genomic testing, we uncovered a targeted therapy match that yielded great outcomes for Sammy. Eight months later, Sammy was celebrating Christmas and Lunar New Year with her family. Her dad sent us a video, and I must've watched it a hundred times.

We have had many milestones, whether our amount of funding, our investors such as YC and a16z, or our proprietary data set of over 2 billion data points collected from 1,350 veterinary clinics worldwide that fuel our precision medicine engine. But stories like Sammy's are our strongest metrics. They remind us that behind every genetic sequence is a beloved pet and its family. If you care about patient survival, you care about the last mile of care and how individual patients are benefiting and creating joy for their families.

4. As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, what future applications do you envision for it within FidoCure? Are there any AI-driven innovations on the horizon that you believe will revolutionize veterinary oncology even further?

One of the most exciting future applications is already in progress! Last month, FidoCure realized a key milestone and won a patent for a novel drug to fight canine cancer. This makes us one of the first “AI-driven drug development” companies in the world (most AI companies in the bio space are for drug discovery, which is very early and risky vs. development, which is quite de-risked with higher evidence for patient outcome improvement). What’s so exciting about this future application is that because FidoCure has developed such extensive and rich data related to various canine cancers, just in a few years with the help of AI, we have a pipeline of targeted therapies and a robust IP program to dramatically accelerate much needed life-saving drugs to market, creating the world’s first portfolio of 21st-century therapies to fight cancer in dogs.

Another future application we’re the most excited about would be using the work we’ve applied to dog cancer treatment to that of human oncology. Our research increasingly shows that dog and human cancers are more similar than previously thought. With AI training on more and more clinical-genomic cancer data sets, we anticipate a future where the same models learning to recommend and develop targeted therapies for dogs can also do so for human cancer patients – in other words, fighting cancer at both ends of the leash.

5. Looking ahead, what are your long-term goals for FidoCure, and how do you envision the company’s role in the future of veterinary medicine?

Looking ahead for FidoCure, we’re focusing on doubling down on AI-driven drug development, and exploring new treatment combinations. We want to revolutionize how we develop cancer drugs for our pets. Right now, most canine cancer treatments have been toxic rejects from human medicine. We're leveraging our genomic data to identify novel drugs and biomarkers specific to canine cancers and figuring out the very best drugs to significantly improve canine cancer outcomes with the least toxicity. It's like finding a needle in a haystack, but our AI algorithms are making it possible.

6. When building your team at FidoCure, what is one of the main characteristics that you look for in potential candidates?

I’d say it’s a combination of grit and big-picture thinking that I believe makes the start-up phenotype. Grit is important to me personally because it has gotten me to where I am. If I hadn’t gone through many of the challenging experiences in my life and learned how to adapt to and overcome them, I wouldn’t have the courage for this role today. Big-picture thinking is essential to us because we’ve moved in so many stages as a company. While all are necessary, each stage has only shown small windows into who we eventually plan to be: a globally impactful biomedicine company that’s the best in the world at curing cancer at both ends of the leash.

7. What advice would you give to your younger self at the start of your career?

I often say "Trust your gut.” And what I mean is tune in to that inner wisdom. It might be telling you to take a risk, to pivot your career, to pursue that crazy idea you had when you were a freshman. It might feel scary, but that's often where the magic happens. And remember, success isn't just about the bottom line. It's about feeling good about the work you put out.

QUICK TAKES:

1. Favorite Spot on Columbia’s Campus?

When I was stressed with classes or exams, I would go for a walk in Riverside Park. In New York City it’s hard to feel like you’re around nature, but this always helped ground me.

2. Tell us about your first dog.

Rexy, an amazing poodle. Very cuddly and borderline needy.

3. What three attributes have made you a strong leader?

• Compassion - The ability to truly think and feel in another person’s shoes helps tremendously with key stakeholders like my team, investors, and most importantly, pet patients and their parents.

• Flexibility - Change is always happening, and if you can be the first to shift, you’ll be ahead of the curve. I did ballet growing up and as a dancer, flexibility is important. For start-ups, it's even more important.

• Courage - This comes from the French ‘heart’ or ‘coeur’ and is vital to create the zero-to-one that all start-ups need.