Vet Optimist Podcast: Interview with CEO Christina K. Lopes and Jennifer Evans

We are excited to share an inspiring and insightful episode of "The Veterinary Optimist" podcast, featuring our very own Christina Lopes, CEO and Co-Founder of The One Health Company. In this special episode, Christina opens up about her journey, from her father’s battle with cancer to the loss of several beloved family dogs, and how these experiences fueled her passion for revolutionizing cancer treatment for pets.

Christina also delves into her background working with marginalized communities, which inspired her to focus on helping voiceless beings and ultimately led her to the veterinary field. Under her leadership, FidoCure has made remarkable strides, expanding into over 1,350 veterinary clinics and treating more than 5,000 dogs with innovative AI and genomic sequencing technologies.

We invite you to listen to Christina's story and learn more about our mission to improve the lives of dogs and their families with cancer. Tune in to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and don’t forget to check out the full transcription of the episode below.

Thank you for being a part of the FidoCure community and supporting our mission to help over 1 million dogs live healthier, happier lives--and ultimately fight cancer on both ends of the leash.

Listen here.

Jennifer Evans:
Hi everybody, and welcome to The Veterinary Optimist. I'm your host, Jennifer Evans, and today we 
have the CEO and co-founder of The One Health Company, Christina Lopes, whose flagship product 
FidoCure uses AI and genomic sequencing to provide personalized treatments for dogs with cancer and 
accelerates the development of life-saving cancer drugs for humans. Under Christina's leadership, 
FidoCure has expanded into over 1,300 vet clinics around the world and treated more than 5,000 pets with 
cancer. In partnership with Stanford University's AI health leadership, Christina has built the world's 
largest and most comprehensive canine dataset, which consists of over 2 billion data points collected from 
patients in real-world environments. Christina's work has been featured in the Washington Post, Wired, 
Stat, The Times, and many other media outlets around the world. I'm excited for you to get to hear 
her story. We talk about where she began, how she found veterinary medicine, and what she's doing now. 
If you ask me, it's probably one of the more inspiring stories I've heard recently, and I'm excited for you 
to get to hear it. So let's jump in and listen to Christina and her story about FidoCure.
Welcome, Christina.

Christina K. Lopes:
Oh, it's my pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.

Jennifer Evans:
It's my pleasure. And I really enjoyed these conversations, because Christina, I think inspiring stories, 
they're so important for anybody much less those of us in the veterinary community. And so I really am 
looking forward to kind of hearing your story about FidoCure, but ultimately Christina, I would love to 
know what led up to cure. So do you mind if we start there?

Christina K. Lopes:
Oh my God, I love it. Yeah, absolutely. Origin story. So background a little bit, just myself. I'm from 
Brazil and I immigrated to the US as a kid and with a single mother and lots of trials and tribulations, and 
that gave some kind of grit and courage, I would say. And the reason why I came to the US was Brazil 
was really in a financial collapse, and that taught me very big projects that are vital sometimes don't get 
funding, don't get the resources at a country level. And so that really planted something in my mind, and 
that's important because I've been now in my career, very much focused on unmet needs, but marrying 
them and creating categories or asset classes that solve the need that might not be very obvious.
These are kind of new things, but that are important and need an ecosystem, whether it's people, 
technology, resources in general. So in that context, I worked actually with emerging market countries, so 
at that level and helping to finance whether it was food or water works or infrastructures in general. And 
eventually you're kind of a generalist, you get into healthcare, so human healthcare.

So I actually started to fall in love with the concept of just, wow, if I had known... So basically got 
involved with, for example, helping to finance a eye hospital in Turkey and just all sorts of things. But 
then eventually got on the advisory board at Planned Parenthood for the Western Hemisphere, and so not 
just the United States, the whole western hemisphere. And that was really taught me so much because you 
really get very up close with the last mile of care and the unmet needs and how to think about that. And 
that's important as I'm going to talk about FidoCure and thinking of the patient, that last mile of care, 
whether the dog with cancer is in Alaska, south Florida, in Paris, that thinking was very much front and 
central for me. And what I learned there was, first of all, speaking about oncology and cancer, Bolivia has 
one of the highest cervical cancer rates in the world, and this is totally preventable through something 
called the HPV vaccine.

So a lot of the work was figuring out how to get from the large biopharma companies, the vaccines, but 
obviously they could pay for it, so it has to be an [inaudible 00:04:53]. So just really figuring all those 
pieces, being mindful of how is this going to get to that woman that is in the mountains of Bolivia, how? 
And I know with COVID and supply chain that's come more front and central to the US, but when we 
started to think about FidoCure, it wasn't so obvious. People weren't thinking this whole process of 
almost, I think of it as distributed, really highly distributed delivery of care.

So at Planned Parenthood, I saw a lot of that. I saw a lot how they organize things, having hubs for 
knowledge exchange on all sorts of topics, women's health, reproductive health, reproductive rights, 
adolescent health. And I saw how they did that, and it was really almost harnessing what was the absolute 
best. And then again, thinking how to distribute so you reached them at last mile of care. So anyways, all 
this to say, I started to say, I really want to work with those that are marginalized and voiceless. I did not 
mean dogs. I mean, they do have a voice, but you know what I mean. So watch what you say because it 
might just come through totally in a way you could never imagine.

Jennifer Evans:
Well, you know what, Christina, even talking about your story so far, there is such a beauty in the 
correlation with your story about coming over here, finding your footing, zooming out from your world 
that surrounds you and wanting to be helpful to so many others, whether it's in the form of Planned 
Parenthood or getting financial aid to countries that really need it. I mean, there's this thought process of 
being so selfless in those moments. And I believe that in the veterinary profession, one of the things that 
we, and maybe healthcare altogether, I always say I always go based off of my own lived experience, but 
my own lived experience is that in veterinary medicine, we're selfless. We'll give so much to the clients 
and so much to the patients that a lot of times we're so disconnected from maybe our needs in the moment 
which build up.

But I think that for you to feel that way and for you to do all of these things, it doesn't surprise me it led 
you to the doorstep of veterinary medicine. And too, I could get lost in all of the questions I want to ask 
about your journey just to this point, what we've already talked about. But I ultimately want to say that 
I'm a huge advocate for women's rights. I'm a huge advocate for minority groups. I'm a huge advocate for 
every voice matters. And so everything that you've done, even up to this point of the story, I just want to 
take a second and honor and say thank you for that because it's not easy.

And seeing things like that in veterinary medicine, I think even when we see shelter medicine and things 
that happen inside of rescues over and over and over again, it's hard to be exposed to that. So I know that 
there had to have been a large amount of things that were hard for you to be exposed to, and the fact that 
you push through and continue to give back, I mean, I just think that that is an incredible thing and speaks 
highly to who you are. So that being said, okay, so now you're at Planned Parenthood.

Christina K. Lopes:
Thank you. I'm blushing here.

Jennifer Evans:
No, it's a big deal. I say this a lot on a lot of my podcasts, but Ed Mylett is somebody I follow and he 
always talks about how you're always best suited to serve the person that you used to be. And I think these 
things that you go through and the things that we go through in life, it puts us in a position of giving back 
in such a beautiful way. And it sounds like you're doing that, and I think it's amazing. Okay, so you're at 
Planned Parenthood, you start to see this way of getting information out. You start to see this way of 
almost like utilizing information to best serve the community. So where do you go from here?

Christina K. Lopes:
So that was very impactful in my journey. And essentially at a personal level, almost concurrently or 
maybe a bit after, my dad actually got cancer and we've had family dogs and to my husband, oh my God, 
numerous dogs with cancer. So I'd observed some of the similarities of the cancer journey of metastasis, 
of wow, the options, chemo and radiation. I mean, they can be great, but look, they're going to zap the 
tumor and the risk is dealing, for example, my dad, they're like, "We might kill him with the radiation." 
So it's not the cancer, the radiation. It just seemed... That hit me like, what?

How can this be in the 21st century such a well-resourced space, now I'm talking the human side, not the 
vet side, the human. It kind of blew my mind because I'd been working as you were just pointing out in 
very frontline, I was working in frankly Wall Street, bringing the capital to the frontline and then Planned 
Parenthood in a different angle or served a bit in the UN Commission on the Status of Women. And so it 
was just shocking to me that such a well-researched space would, I started to learn a little more about 
actually animal testing and that maybe 100 million animals are used a year and the data is not good. It's 
not predictive, it doesn't translate. They've engineered the mouth to such a point that it works for any 
disease, but then it doesn't recapitulate the journey of the human journey, which is multifactorial.
I mean, there's just so much in cancer specifically. So I got exposed, so I started to attend the World 
Economic Forum at Davos. So through both the emerging markets, finance work and then some of the 
service work, and actually Joe Biden was vice president at the time, and I don't know if you know his son 
had cancer and he launched a cancer moonshot. And it was a really transformative program, really 
thinking of everyday data in the clinic and how to use that and very much pro-precision medicine. There's 
a whole infrastructure and it was really a wow moment. And I got actually a first seat to see all of that. 
And one thing that in the moonshot the person who headed the moonshot knows us, actually Joe 
Biden actually has gotten to know what we do, is essentially that they were really like, wow, supportive 
of can we elevate the pet dog into the clinical trial framework as a patient, not as a subject?

And that to me was very, again, I'm kind of into these conceptual, almost ethical shifts and kind of 
looking for this 21st century leadership. And essentially I was like, oh my God, the dog as a patient. And 
the dog as a patient, the ultimate, every human cancer patient wants to get in a clinical trial, it's kind of 
your chance. And so almost again, at the same time, there was a big meeting in Washington, DC at the 
National Academy of Medicine gathering really the leaders in human oncology and veterinary oncology 
together. So really comparative oncology, which means comparing across the species the comparative 
biology. And a lot of my team comes from that meeting, long story short. So yeah, our Chief Medical 
Officer personally had funded through his animal cancer foundation the meeting. So I met him there 
who's been a great inspiration. And his name is Dr. Gerry Post and really leader, he had one of the most 
pristine clinics in veterinary medicine for oncology in the world.

And so part of my head was like, "Oh, how can we replicate him?" Because not everyone can get thinking 
that last mile of care to posh Connecticut, so how can we get this everywhere? But what I loved about 
him, and he was very much clinician scientists, he was running clinical trials, he was doing a lot of 
clinical research to really get the research, the clinical evidence, all of that flowing so you can improve 
the delivery of care. And also I met at that meeting, Amy Abernethy, who she really coined the term real 
world evidence. So this idea that everyday care, wellness care, ER visits, and again, she was thinking 
human, but here we have the pets, those data, that's really valuable information and it really just goes to 
the air most of the time. So how can those data turn into evidence, like clinical evidence to accelerate our 
body of knowledge at the delivery of care at the clinic level?

And so she was amazed to learn more about the comparative biology, the similarities across species. 
Again, she was a melanoma cancer doc. And what I learned from her was very much like, oh wow, if 
there's no HIPAA in dogs, which is a privacy protection, it's an important thing. But from a data point of 
view, it's very rate limiting. It's a rate limiting factor, because you have to anonymize a lot, it's very 
expensive to comply. It's very big friction. Now putting my techie hat, I'm crazy about data and all of this, 
basically it's a big friction.

So to work around that is incredibly hard. Hence, when you think, why is healthcare, why are there some 
things that are so bad? And so there's a lot of frictions that go in. So that was an aha for her. And then we 
got to meet, and essentially this just gelled all together of like, wow, we need better care in cancer on both 
sides of the leash. This is a very big unmet need for both species. There are only two species in the whole 
planet that get a lot of cancer and that there's a payer. I mean, kitties too, but majority is humans and dogs.

Jennifer Evans:
You're right. That's exactly right. The numbers are astounding on even compared dogs to cats. So I 
completely understand what you're saying.

Christina K. Lopes:
And the dogs, they actually get a higher incidence of cancer than humans. So it's like, wow, how could we 
given the comparative oncology or comparative biology, the similarities, how could we now take those 
similarities, which amazing folks at one of our SAB members, Dr. Cheryl London at Tufts is already 
running lots of studies, helped different therapeutics come to market on both sides for human cancers, 
canine cancer. So there are already folks very deep in this, the basic science really evolving the body of 
knowledge, many folks, but they're in academic centers. So just like in the human context, it's fantastic if 
you can get to Stanford or Memorial Sloan Kettering, but what happens when you can't? And what 
happens to those data? What's happening there? So the idea here was to very much bring this concept of 
let's advance the cures together for both species.

How can we reimagine animal testing from something that heals, doesn't hurt? And actually that's the 
virtuous cycle because that's the data point we're looking for to understand why did that German 
Shepherd that's nine years old with bone cancer and a certain mutation, why was this an exceptional 
responder? So we're actually into the N-of-1. We're interested exactly in why that configuration worked 
for that patient. And then when we see a similar patient, can we learn from that patient for all future 
patients? And that's the beauty of real world evidence and this whole re-imagining of frankly how to 
generate clinical evidence that Amy was leading on the human side and we're like, "Oh my God, can you 
help us? We're going to do it on the pet side." And she loved it and she wrote the first report. And I'll just 
say one last thing, because it's important.

We believe precision medicine or personalized medicine is a holy grail in medicine, period. And what that 
means is you and I are sitting here and we're both women, have two legs, not four. So all of that, but we're 
different. And those differences matter for treatments and then for outcomes. So it's this idea of really 
understanding that patient, and this probably relevant even in antibiotics or anything, but in cancer it's 
even more relevant. However, imagine now how are you going to figure things out when you're going to 
that N-of-1, it's really hard because traditional randomized controlled trials, you're kind of more enrolling 
a population and there's all sorts of designs. So that's a really challenge in having precision medicine 
really boom is there's not enough data to understand data sets, patient data sets, to even understand all the 
different permutations. So the rise of precision medicine has almost, in my view, has to be very linked to 
data, very large, well-structured dataset. I'll stop here. Questions?

Jennifer Evans:
Okay, all right. I'm glad one, you can say all the things because I'm very interested in everything that 
we're talking about right now. And then two, so what you're saying is you are almost the, what's the 
word? Almost like the motherboard of all the information coming in from the different pets that have 
been diagnosed with cancer and the treatments that have worked for them. You're the hub of where that 
information is going because then you take that information and then you put it together so that you can 
have the data that you're talking about. And then once you have the data, it allows for the more precision 
care so that we can continue to find better ways to treat not only animals, but humans too. Am I saying 
that correctly?

Christina K. Lopes:
Yeah, no, pretty much how it goes is we help deliver. So I'll talk about specifically FidoCure in a second, 
but essentially we partner with the clinic and we want to, if the patient is in Alaska, that's where we want 
to show up. So how can we even show up at the right place at the right time? That's part of our design and 
things we're thinking about and why this podcast is important, because we get the word out there. But 
essentially we want to basically bring this FidoCure, which is a precision medicine toolbox of 
sophisticated diagnostics and targeted therapies for cancer care to the dog where they are at in partner 
with clinician, almost like the copilot. As the care is delivered by the clinician, already in our product we 
collect the data in a very structured way so it is not an afterthought like we have a data lake here and a 
data lake there, and we hope that by mashing it all together, we're going to get some almost magical 
insight.

So that's actually a really important point, especially in biology because you really have to do the data sets 
ground up. They're just not very good data sets. It's not like when everyone's hearing about gen AI and all 
this stuff, there's so much information in the internet and actually well cataloged information. But when it 
comes to biology, and this could be humans, dogs, the natural world, when we move to that quadrant of 
atoms, so out of bits to atoms, it's really difficult because the data sets just have not been built. And if 
they exist, they're usually built for just not fit for purpose. They have very different purposes. Traditional 
clinical records have been done mostly for billing. So lots of the important information, even on the 
human side, it's just not there. It's just not even there. But if you're thinking from a clinical evidence body

Jennifer Evans:
Well, and even when you think about it, veterinarians love data. They love data, they want to know what's 
been seen. And from my own perspective, and again, this is just my own thought process, a lot of the 
companies that have data-driven reviews are based off of very isolated cases that are set up in a way that 
they can monitor things very well. And not all of them, I'm just going off of what I've been able to really 
better understand. And even then it's focused on how their specific drug reacts in that animal.
And although that's wonderful for that specific drug, I can completely understand how it's so limiting for 
really anything else when it sounds to me like you are out trying to pull the information just to have it, 
just to have it as kind of a backing for being that co-pilot for these veterinarians so that you can give them 
the best direction possible and even say, not only do we feel like this is a great direction, but here's what's 
making us feel that way, and here's the information that supports that. I mean, Christina, that's amazing. 
So if that's the case, tell me a little bit more about FidoCure itself.

Christina K. Lopes:
Oh, thank you for asking. So we basically looked in the human world of oncology. Positing that there's 
similarities across species, dog, human cancer overlap. There had been a body of knowledge already 
generated. It was the dataset small, but they're there, and we basically were very mindful of the clinic 
workflow and how to lessen the basically barriers to care, oncological care. Meaning, there are very few 
radiation machines, because they're very expensive, very expensive for the clinic, for the pet parents. We 
looked at what's a toolbox that could really be at that last mile of care for the veterinary space and not be 
an arm and a leg, just really democratize the care. And so we looked at what were the advancements in 
the human world and how could we design, take those very de-risked gold standard 21st century, I didn't 
want anything from last century. No, don't...

So what's the de-risked and well established? So we don't take that kind of risk. So it's already coming 
online. There is some cross-species understanding, not everything is similar, but it's not everything is 
exact. So understanding that. And so we gathered possibly the best scientific advisory board and many 
who were at that meeting in Washington to figure out how to do this. And essentially we designed a next 
gen sequencing test. So maybe the first one in veterinary medicine, which basically looks at the tumor, 
but what is driving that patient's tumor at the more genetic level? So rather than just the location, which is 
usually the histopathology looks where is it? And certain features, this is looking at a kind of another lens 
almost like what is driving at the genetic molecular level. And so we launched the test. However, what's 
the use of knowing if Fido has, for example, BRCA, which we hear about in human context, if you don't 
have an intervention?

So we were very geared towards actionability. And again, very inspired by that Planned Parenthood 
experience of it has to impact and it has to impact that last mile of care. We don't need to reproduce 
something small and maybe amazing, but just not high impact. So the idea was, okay, we looked and saw, 
wow, there's really not much. The toolbox is limited and very limited to a few very specialized centers 
that have the infrastructure to deliver, again, a radiation machine that's really expensive. So that's 
amazing, but it's just not going to be everywhere. So we've looked at this class of drugs called targeted 
therapies and they're pills and they essentially, so for example, Apoquel, which is widely offered is 
actually a JAK inhibitor. So it's a target JAK, and it's actually this class of drugs and I think it was 
originally intended for cancer.

So imagine these are from the ease. It's at the home, number one. Number two, it's some, unlike certain 
other modalities like intravenous drugs that a dog can overdose, essentially what we can do is help 
manage the side effects to such a way that there can be a drug holiday say if the dog's having a GI 
diarrhea and take a couple days drug holiday and we still see anti-tumor effect. So we're in fact potentially 
even figuring out how to use these drugs in a whole new way, because the human context, as you know, 
they go very aggressive, but nobody really... Is that the best way? So we're learning things in veterinary 
medicine and our goal is to actually leapfrog and almost take advantage that we can generate the data and 
use these tools that were already quite de-risked, but almost involve them specifically for veterinary 
medicine.

Jennifer Evans:
So you're not using new drugs, you're using ones that have all been pre-used in human form. You're just 
making the data better. You're working side by side with veterinarians and you're taking in more data to 
get beefier knowledge to deliver better care. And essentially you are trying to make it to where there's 
access to care for all. Because again, this is another one of my opinions, but life is expensive and paying 
for veterinary medicine when you're an owner, pet insurance has not caught on widely enough yet in my 
opinion. And it's expensive, and cancer treatment is expensive, radiation is expensive, surgery, all of it is 
expensive. And so it's almost as if you're even creating more of a pathway for them to treat their animals 
in a way that's not going to make them auction off their house.

Christina K. Lopes:
That's 100%, you nailed it. 100% the intent. So the intent is something that can be truly accessible and 
importantly, and this is an important point to make, that impacts survival. So meaning we're not 
interested in incremental anything like helping 30 more days. That's not why we're waking up in the 
morning and doing all of this against all odds. We are interested in transformative, basically shifting 
cancer into more of a chronic disease versus a death sentence and that is happening. Let me tell you, we 
see it in our data. We publish, we publish in Nature Precision Oncology. We're the first to publish, and 
frankly, in record time, the outcomes in precision medicine for dogs with cancer, the very first. And what 
we see is that when we're able to identify that mutation, the driver, the genetic driver, and correlate it with 
the right drug, call it, it's like the concept of the right drug at the right time for the right dog, we are seeing 
pretty even up to 3X improvement. So dogs live hundreds of days into thousands of days.

Jennifer Evans:
Wow.

Christina K. Lopes:
Yeah, it's the first, it's amazing. And that is important to get out there, to get the message 
out there because there's this concept and we see it every day because we get calls and we are trying to 
help both veterinarians, and we do get calls from pet parents who are like, wait, my parents had 
lymphoma and lived 10 years on a drug, unusually small, this type of targeted therapy or the case of, for 
example, human melanoma. One of our founding advisors, Amy Abernethy, is a melanoma doc, and she 
talks about how in 2005, melanoma was a death sentence, and her job was basically like, there's not 
much. It was very bleak.

By 2015, you have Jimmy Carter getting on these more evolved drugs and is living until today and the 
space has been completely transformed, transformed. It's not him. You know what I mean? There's not 
even the... It's completely transformed. That's one tumor type. There have been others in the human 
experience also, and I think this is just the beginning, of course not all. There's still very, it's a very tough 
disease because it changes, it's smart, but it's very promising to see this. And then our data is showing 
extremely promising results and at scale. So it's not a tiny study with 20, 30, 50 dogs that you never know 
how the biases got in there. We're talking, we published in the first 2,000 patients, so it's like that kind of 
volume right across 200 clinics, 200.

Jennifer Evans:
Wow.

Christina K. Lopes:
So we're now in 1,350 clinics. So it's just that scale is really vital and we designed for scale. I mean, it 
goes all together. We want to reach the last mile of care, so it's got to be very well scaled. The more we 
help a patient, the more we learn for all future patients. We want to make every patient's life and frankly, 
the vet who's there and all the care team that loves that patient. Let's not forget the vet tech, even the 
admin on the front desk, everybody in a vet clinic is very involved. 

Jennifer Evans:
Okay, so then Christina, here's this question. What do you do with all this information when it comes in? 
How do you keep ahold of all of it? How do you keep it molding in a way that serves the veterinary team 
and serves the patient and serves the client? It just seems like you're 1,000 clinics and multiple thousand 
dogs. I mean, that's a lot of information.

Christina K. Lopes:
It is. So we're up to, we're close to 2 billion data points. So it's one of the largest mammalian longitudinal 
cancer datasets in the world. Yeah, it's remarkable. So we've already been able to do that. And we have 
more papers being published. We published four. So first and foremost, publication.We want the science 
to get out. We always promised our early adopters, many amazing veterinary oncologists were the first 
ones. And we said, we will publish, we're going to share the data. And so we are realizing that promise, so 
that this is a movement really. We need everybody together. So publication, number one. Number two, 
we keep improving our products. So as we learn, as we sequence the tumors and we learn about a 
mutation that maybe wasn't obvious in dogs, so we're doing many first-ever findings, then we can say, oh, 
we learned that we're seeing it at scale in this tumor type or in this context, we need a drug. What are the 
drugs in the human world that we could translate alongside a pharmacy partner?

So we keep learning. So it's a learning data set. And so the other part is we started on the sequencing, we 
did whole genome and RNA. It was huge covering every possible base. But because we do that and 
collect phenotypical data also for the dog, so the breed, age, characteristics of the tumor, and then we 
partner with the pharmacy, deliver treatment, and then we manually track survival, we're able to also 
understand what does that mutation mean now for the context of the dog? We might understand that 
mutation, let's say BRCA for humans, because it's been billions of dollars, eons, but we might not totally 
understand what this means for dogs. But now by interrelating and learning, we start to see, we start to 
see, oh, when it shows up alone, that's what it means.

Oh, it shows up with two other mutations, that's good news, bad news. We get into the prognostic 
predictive world and conclusion. And that's ultimately what this big data, what we want to do. We're all 
probably watching Netflix and listening to Spotify and using all the different maps. Those are very large 
data sets predicting the song that came up and you're like, wait. So there's all this predictive work being 
done and certainly advertisement and social media. So it's the same concepts, but very affirming projects 
of cancer with the same idea. We need voluminous, large, well-structured amount of datas in order to start 
seeing these nuances. That is where we live. That matters and it really matters in cancer.

Jennifer Evans:
When you talk about the predictive-ness of the social medias and the marketing and things like that, I 
immediately go to a couple of places in my mind, one, I'm grateful that it's being used for something that's 
not going to make me go broke by buying a shirt that I'm going to not ever wear.

Christina K. Lopes:
Or misinformation.

Jennifer Evans:
Yeah, it's important. But there's this space for me, Christina, where I want to ask you a little bit about this, 
because the first thing that pops in my mind, and it's the scary thing in my mind that I think a lot of people 
in general, but even a lot of people in our profession kind of bristle at, which is the two letters, AI. Does 
that play an effect into what you're talking about right now? And if so, is it something for us to bristle 
about or is it something that is really being used for good?

Christina K. Lopes:
In our case, oh my gosh, 1,000%. Because when you get these very... So first of all, what AI means in the 
biomedical space, whether it's for dogs, humans, kitties, really what we're talking about, if you're AI first, 
which we are, I did Y Combinator, this program under Sam Altman was the head. So we've been very 
thoughtful about this day one. This is not an afterthought, and let me explain why that's so important. So 
essentially, there are significant challenges in what they call data acquisition. So I can't just go buy a data 
set of thousands of patient data in cancer for dogs. And even in the human world, you can buy parts of it 
but not complete. So then it's very, it's just again, the quality goes down. So anyone really serious in the 
biomedical space about AI needs to be data first, and that means you're probably building out the data set.
You have to be very intentional and it's very fit for purpose, because it's not data to mine for financial 
information, it's data to mine for clinical insights. I mean that is, or if you're doing say drug discovery, it's 
a different type, but again, you're building it up. Why? Because the statistical powers and everything 
didn't even exist a few years ago. So then by having the dataset, the beauty is we can then leverage and 
we do the most sophisticated AI techniques, which in our case means almost statistics on total steroids. I 
would've needed 10 years ago a massive team of very expensive biomedical to crunch the data. And now 
we can do this lean and mean, very lean and just a couple people essentially are able to find the needle in 
the haystack, which in cancer is everything. That is what we're after.

We want to find what, and we published on this already, we published our AI platform, so we're also very 
transparent about it. And so we want to find where is that patient, what are the patients that are having this 
exceptional survival? What is the mutation? What is the drug, what is the tumor? What goes on? Maybe 
it's a few mutations. Understanding that context, and you really need large volumes data sets in order to 
understand that at such impact. So the AI techniques are actually amazing. They're game-changers for us.
 But if I was just running tests over there and collecting, let's say whatever data you have to do for your 
taxes and accounting and we were helping enable with pharmacy partner drugs over there and didn't build 
this day one interrelating already, this would not work. And the challenge is a lot of people just saying AI, 
humanity, AI, but if you don't have the dataset in a certain way, it's really hard. But I'm very excited. I 
think this biological space in AI is actually the big, big, big wow. I really do. But we need the data sets in 
order to mine and understand, but it is a biological golden age right now because of these techniques.

Jennifer Evans:
I completely agree with you. So I'll give you this example. I started off, I worked at a big company that 
had a diagnostic product that was AI based and when you talk to people inside of veterinary practices, one 
of the first thing they think is, oh, it's going to take my job or I'm not going to understand it. All of these 
different thoughts get them nervous in their head. And I get that. And I had to be one of the people 
ushering in these other thoughts of like, well, this is really to help you be able to focus on the patient and 
not spend so much time researching. This is to help you have a quicker connection. And so I completely 
agree with there is a space inside of the healthcare space even outside of that where we can use AI for 
good.

Christina K. Lopes:
Oh, yeah.

Jennifer Evans:
I believe that there's some fear that it's all going to be used for bad. And I think conversations like this 
really help delineate that there really is great things happening with it. And on certain aspects of AI, we 
should really be leaning in, because it's not going away. We can use it for good. And if that's the case, 
that's where our focus should be. And it sounds to me like that's exactly what FidoCure is doing with it, 
and I really just have a strong appreciation for that.

Christina K. Lopes:
No, look, it's a topic of the age, because there are nefarious actors leveraging AI and amplifying with 
social media, for example, factions, making everything more divided, polarized. So no doubt, we have to 
be very careful. How to do that is really hard, because it's kind of happening. And so I think it is the onus 
is to help build. And so I'm so grateful to be able to share my story here on your platform because people 
have to understand that you can have more positive impact in the world. And in general, I'll tell you, I 
want to see more of that. I want to see more risk-takers in for good. I think you can go for it more, 
because the cost of things in that sense has gone down. So what we do, for example, genomics, way 
down, I've been writing this thing called Moore's Law.

So it's like what are the things that when you get to scale and time, the cost goes down, genomics, using 
these data strategies we're able to mine in a way we would've just would've been impossible almost, even 
to store the data would've been impossible. So that we're able to do that and figure things out and do it so 
efficiently, that's where we want the creative minds of our planet to be thinking. And whether it's to 
helping dogs or climate or the worthy and reward that, I think that's a cultural shift that we need to focus 
more on as a community at large.

Jennifer Evans:
Listen, I'm building a longer table every single day of my life, because I want to make sure that we're 
focusing on the optimistic, beautiful things and we're really putting our energy into that. And I know 
Christina, we're getting ready to kind of wrap up this conversation and I really want to make sure before 
we get into the end of it that is there anything that we haven't talked about with FidoCure? Is there 
anything that you want to make sure that we cover? Or even then, is there something that we as the 
veterinary community could be doing to help serve you or FidoCure in a way that would benefit y'all?

Christina K. Lopes:
Oh, thanks for asking. I mean, I think first and foremost, we can only do, we're again, like a copilot, 
where I say all the time we're like Sherpas for the clinic. So we can only do this by partnering with the 
clinician and the clinic. So to the extent that we can get more, basically by working together, we generate 
more data, we're able to have scale, the cost goes down. So just this scaling and amazing 
transformative power can only happen with the clinicians. So the more we partner together, how can I go 
from, we go from a thousand clinics to 10,000? Can you imagine going from thousands of patients to 
millions of patients? Can you imagine what we're going to understand about cancer then? We go earlier in 
the patient's journey. 

As we start getting into the millions, we go into that quadrant of medicine, which goes even away from 
definitely reactive, not even proactive, predictive. And I think that's where we want to be. And if we can 
do this, we need to be in partnership, so that's number one. But if we can really 
partner as a movement together, we can almost again, leapfrog potentially the human paradigm, which 
has all these frictions and so much going on in there. And that would be just amazing, amazing. 
Transform the industry into something really, really for the 21st century, increased satisfaction. How can we be the partner that really helps? So for the happiness quotient. So that's my ask-- is let's do this as a movement together.

Jennifer Evans:
How do they find you?

Christina K. Lopes:
And build this future.

Jennifer Evans:
Where do they go to find you?

Christina K. Lopes:
Our website, fidocure.com. We want to be basically at least  considered with every cancer case. And I want to make it so that we can do that from all the different, financially, technologically be there for every dog with cancer, this should be an option. Maybe it's the  right one, maybe not, but that's the conversation of clinician with pet parent and we just want to be there to give the best data.

Jennifer Evans:
Man, I am telling you something, there's only a handful of people that I meet and within a very short 
amount of time know that not only do I want to support them, but I want to be their friend. I mean, 
Christina, you're clearly a very powerful woman with a very incredible brain. And I can tell that you're 
driven by a much deeper purpose. You're driven by a much bigger reason. And that is the kind of people I 
like to surround myself with. So one, I just want to be your friend and I'm so grateful that we've taken this 
time to have this conversation.

And then two, I find it super important to show gratitude when I can and that is most certainly going to 
show up here. Just like with any other episode, I'm so grateful that you're doing this. The fact that you are 
using words like gold standard and partnering and purpose and the statement, this is very much an and for 
there to be two things true, for there to be an and for anything I think is so important and for you to know 
that that is huge. It is clear to me that you're doing incredible things in the veterinary profession and I'm 
extremely grateful for it. So thank you.

Christina K. Lopes:
Well, thank you for being you and having this podcast and it is my honor to be here and share our story 
and to have and feel so appreciated. So I want to retribute the appreciation for what you're doing because 
you're elevating the important voices, I hope, or the missions. We're just in the beginning, but by you 
elevating what we're building together, we get to the right ears, the right collaborators, and kind of create 
this very positive, virtuous. That's kind of where we want to go, and it's my mission.

Jennifer Evans: 
I love it. If you're listening to this right now, if you have any control or power or anything in the practice 
that you work in, go to FidoCure, make a partnership, make it happen. And Christina, I just look forward 
to watching you shine. So thank you very much.