 Hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of Curiosity on Stage. This presentation is part of a series where we discuss new scientific discoveries and emerging technologies that are making an impact on Canada and global society. Even though we are meeting today on a virtual platform, I would like to acknowledge the importance of the land that we all call home. From coast to coast to coast, we acknowledge the treaty lands and the ancestral and unceded territory of the Inuit, Mitti, and First Nations people. I am joining you this evening from my home office in Ottawa, which is built on the unceded Algonquin and Nishinaabe territory. My name is Michelle Makarski. I will be your host for this evening, and I am the science advisor at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Finally, I want to thank the Ingenium Foundation, who is generously co-hosting this Curiosity on Stage speaker series, which celebrates the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin. We are truly grateful to have the Foundation's support in amplifying Ingenium's mission, and particularly inspired by their mission towards science for all. I would also like to thank the National Research Council of Canada for their support in making this series more accessible through translations, transcriptions, and captioning. Now here at Curiosity on Stage, our goal is to get you thinking, and we do that by bringing in experts to share stories and revelations on topics that matter. Tonight, in conjunction with the Ingenium Foundation, I am delighted to introduce the third of three webinars in the thematic series Beyond Injections, 100 Years of Insulin and the Future of Diabetes. This particular series is significant, as it commemorates the 100th year anniversary of the discovery of insulin, which is arguably one of the most life-saving inventions to ever come out of Canada. Before the discovery of insulin, someone who was diagnosed with diabetes was basically told to get your affairs in order, as most could only expect to survive a couple of months beyond their diagnosis. This is why the discovery of insulin in 1921 was such a breakthrough. It saved millions of lives, but it's not the end of the road. If you have type 1 diabetes, you need to regularly self-administer insulin to keep your blood sugars within a normal range. The trouble is, that's not a simple task. There are 42 factors that impact blood sugar levers and determine the amount of insulin you need to self-administer. These include things like what time of day it is, what types of food you're eating, and how much. If you're exercising, if you're stressed, how stressed are you? Are you sleeping a lot? Are you taking a nap? What are your hormones doing at any particular given time? As you can see, there's a lot to think about. Now, diabetes will slowly and steadily erode your organs. It's a toxic roller coaster of high and low blood sugar levels that can lead to long-term complications such as blindness, stroke, heart attacks, kidney diseases, and imputation. The discovery of insulin did not cure diabetes. Too much insulin and you risk severe low blood sugar, which can lead to death. Too little insulin and you risk diabetic ketoacidosis, which can also lead to death in as little as three days. Diabetes does not have a cure, but today we're going to be hearing a story about how maybe, just maybe, we could be close to one. Now, before I introduce our speaker, I want to ask a question to our audience here. Have any of you ever watched anything by HBO, A&E, PBS, Sony Pictures Classics, Lifetime, Discovery TV, MTV, TLC, or CBC in, I don't know, the last 25 years or so? If you have, there's a good chance you may have seen some of our speaker's work. Lisa Hepner has spent the last two decades producing a variety of films and programs along with an impressive list of acclaimed directors. Along with her husband, Guy Mossman, she runs a production company in LA called Box Pop Films, which specializes in nonfiction content and commercials. One of Lisa's latest projects and her directorial debut is the focus of today's talk. And it's a documentary called The Human Trial. This documentary tells the story of a biotech startup on the verge of a major medical breakthrough, a stem cell derived product which could lead to a cure for type 1 diabetes. So here today to talk to us about accelerating a cure for diabetes lessons from a global pandemic is Lisa Hepner. Welcome to Curiosity On Stage. Thank you so much, Michelle. I'm thrilled to be here. Not only am I Canadian, but I was born in Ottawa and I grew up there. So this is very special to be speaking to my hometown crowd. I think I would like to start the talk by saying I'm not a scientist, I'm not a researcher, I'm not a biologist. In fact, I remember clearly in high school begging my biology teacher to not have to write my final exam. So this is not, this was not my area of expertise when we started this film. So I come to you today as a filmmaker and someone with type 1 diabetes. I've had type 1 diabetes for 31 years. That's a long time. And I think, Michelle, you encapsulated and explained it beautifully. Insulin is not a cure and this disease can kill you. And I don't believe the general public fully grasps that. So my job as a director and a patient with type 1 when I was making this film was threefold. One, shine a light on what it's like to live with type 1 diabetes and why it needs to be cured. Two, bring the curtain back on cure research. I liken it to bringing the curtain back on Oz, showing what really happens in the labs, what really happens in the trials, to fully explain why it takes a long time for these breakthroughs to happen. And these breakthroughs don't happen fast enough for anyone suffering from a chronic disease or for anyone who has a loved one with a chronic disease. Thirdly, I think it was very important to show the power and potential of embryonic stem cell research and how it should not be politicized. I'm happy to say that the Canadian and me knows that in Canada, there is not the same level of religious debate or shall we say right wing debate that exists in this country. But there have been times when this type of research has been stymied and it put back a lot of potential breakthroughs, including via sites work. So those were the three goals. And I certainly hope that in our 92 minute film that these are apparent. I think actually coming back to the fact how little I know about science or how little I knew about science, that was actually probably an advantage. Because when I was talking and interviewing the researchers, I made them talk to me like I was six years old, like I was their six year old niece or nephew. And obviously being able to distill these messages so the general public can understand is critical. And it also helped me understand that was probably my secret. Anyway, before I talk more, I would love to show you a trailer for the human trial that we just finished. It hasn't been released to the public. So this truly is a sneak preview for you. We are releasing the film on June 24th in Canada and the United States. We're booking theaters right now. And there will be more opportunities to watch the film, which I can speak to later. Brian, if you're there, could you please play that trailer for the human trial? There's a lot of unknowns. And I think it's the unknowns that are terrifying. And it's me. It's me on that operating table. We're developing the bio artificial pancreas that can potentially cure type 1 diabetes. It's become a joke that the cure is always five years away. But if it's so close, what is taking so long? Do you feel guilty that the cure is always five years away? I don't feel guilty. I feel hopeful. When you're doing clinical research, there's always the first patient. I have some extreme lows, which caused me to have seizures. I'm going blind. It takes 10 to 20 years to develop a new drug. This is my life's work. We need the investment to prove to you that this works. We have 180 days of cash. What happens if you don't raise the money? Shut the doors. Part of science that I'm trying to come to grips with on my own is, is it even working? Yeah. Because if it works, it's like winning the lottery. We still don't know how it'll work in people. And that's why we're all here, to make it work in people. 32 years of the waiting, I've hoped and prayed for this for a long time. I don't know if I can keep doing this anymore. It's just been really hard on them. But they're paving the way for others, so... We're talking about my life here. I'm not afraid of death, but I need to be here for my daughter. That's what this is about. How much is writing on this? Everything. Sorry. It has been more than I ever expected. You're showing efficacy. The sea had come this far. It's amazing. I'd like to think I'm a pioneer. When you read in textbooks, she was the first. So fingers crossed. Okay, you guys, I hope that gives you a flavor of the film. We'll be showing another clip later on. I think we are often asked, Guy and me. Guy is my husband and cinematographer who co-directed the film with me. We are often asked, what was the genesis of this film? Why did you guys choose to take on this Herculean task, a following science in real time, a following an experimental trial that had never been done before? And why did you commit to filming it? To perhaps efficacy? And the answer is we didn't know better. It's, you know, we learned patience as the trial unfolded, and we learned that what we wanted in two years' time wasn't going to happen. If I were to backtrack even a little further as to why we made this film, it actually taps into me being a type one person with type one diabetes. When Guy and I were living in Brooklyn in 2008, I woke up one morning drenched in sweat and dazed and confused. I'd suffered a severe hypoglycemic attack in the night. Guy turned to me being the inveterate filmmaker that he is and said, we need to make a film. I had no idea about diabetes until I lived with you. This is not, this is a bad disease. We need to do something. After much convincing, I agreed that we should at least research how we might tell the story of diabetes. So let's fast forward to 2013, where we were living in LA and we did a lot of research into what stem cells, what the potential was for stem cell therapies to cure type one diabetes. All of this research led to Viacite, a biotech company in San Diego that had just submitted their IND to the FDA. The IND is an investigational new drug application. Sorry if I butchered that. And it basically means the FDA has given you the green light to go into the clinic to experiment on humans. We were there. We were lucky. The filmmaking gods looked down on us. And we were there when they got the phone call from the FDA. And we were there when Viacite was popping champagne and celebrating that they were actually going to the clinic to experiment to try and make this work in humans. There was so much passion in the room and so much commitment. Viacite, many people at Viacite had been working on this particular protocol for a decade. This is highly unusual in the world of biotech. Most people don't work on a single product for that long. So the excitement was palpable. And we started to film. And we learned, as I keep saying, a lot. And I want to share some of the hurdles that we saw the scientists experiencing. Because as a type one, as a person with type one diabetes, I was pretty cynical about cure research. When I was diagnosed in 1991, I was told the cure was five years away. As you can see in the trailer, it's a promise that is told to most people with type one diabetes and most families who have type one diabetes and they have to deal with it. So I was cynical going into this. And then when we started filming, I started to understand the hurdles and just how difficult it was to not only fund a clinical trial, but to stay in a clinical trial. So here are my takeaways, which I hope you find interesting. Science takes time. Progress is incremental. Now, we heard Dr. Fauci say that a lot over the past two years. I hope his message found a home. I know in many places it did not. But it is the truth. We all want a tidy headline that talks about a breakthrough that talks about a Nobel Prize, but science doesn't work that way. And in science, and this was a big lesson for me, just even as a human being, there is no such thing as failure. All failure leads to a better understanding of what can be done better the next time. So as we were filming, running out of money, we're two and a half years in, I had to be reminded by the CSO, the chief scientific officer, that this is how science works. And Lisa, if you're here filming, you have to basically relax. So I did. And this is one of the biggest lessons that I don't think many people know is how expensive it is to fund cure research. It, on average, in the United States, it costs $3 billion to take a drug to the marketplace. And that's if the drug even gets to the marketplace. The statistic on that is very depressing. It's less than 1% of drugs that are in the clinic actually, or device, make it to the marketplace. So it's a very expensive and risky endeavor. And when we were filming, I was chagrined and surprised to see that the researchers were traveling around the world raising money for a clinical trial that was about to go dark. And they weren't in the lab working, perfecting, fixing problems. They were part of my language shilling for money in Riyadh, in Tokyo, in Canada. They were doing the best they could to keep it going. And when I asked the researchers who I became, you know, pretty close to, I said, so just what is the impediment to you curing type one, if you will? And they said money because they fully believe in their product. Biocyte fully believes that their embryonic, that their stem cell derived product will work. And I am really thrilled to say that they've proven efficacy on a few patients and that they are now working with CRISPR, the gene editing company, to create a cell line that is not detected by the patient's immune system. So this means that no anti-rejection drugs would be needed. I'm kind of diving into the science here. Nonetheless, I have so much respect for the researchers, for the biotech innovators who challenge the status quo and who work tirelessly for often pennies an hour until they can take their drug or device to the marketplace. It's risky. It's a long game. And I learned that loud and clear. So let's, Brian, let's cue up my second clip. It's a longer one. It's just under 13 minutes. And it's the introduction to the film. And you'll meet the research scientists at Biocyte and you'll see what they were up against. The average person has three traumatic events in their life. Waking up in the ICU was one of mine. Maybe we can test daddy's blood sugar and see what daddy's is. I've spent the last 30 years trying to outrun my disease, but it's not working. The irony is I look healthy, but I'm not. I always feel like I'm going to the principal's office for these calls. I hate doing these calls. My little stress ball, pancreas. Hi, Mary Rose. Hi, Lisa. You know, there's one thing I want to say. I wanted to tell you that I have a little tingling in my heel and my left heel. And it's only like when I'm in the shower and I'm like shaving my leg or whatever. But I've been feeling a bit of tingling. And that's, I'll be honest, it's kind of freaking me out. But I don't know, like, well, you can't, the diabetes can't be starting to affect your nervous system. This could be the beginning of neuropathy. So the best thing to do is get your blood sugars under control. I mean, you know, I've had type one now 31 years and I wasn't always in really tight control. Well, I know it's hard. Well, we've got today and we can move forward from here. You know, it's best to face this before it gets real badly. I could never judge you for not being perfect with this honey, because I couldn't do it myself. And I don't, that's why I think you should come see me more because you can't do it yourself either. Yeah. Bye. Bye. Thank you. You didn't tell me about your feet. Just something I hope that goes away if I take better care of myself. It's become a joke in the community that the cure is always five years away. Stay strong. The cure is on the horizon. But each year, more than five million people die from diabetes waiting for that cure. If it's so close, what is taking so long? We started looking for a biotech company that was doing something different, something radical. Then in 2014, my husband Guy and I heard about a company that was rethinking how to cure diabetes. They had engineered stem cells to implant into humans. We were skeptical, but intrigued. The patient got his insulin at 1922. We cannot be a strong nation unless we are a healthy nation. And so we must recruit not only men and materials, but also knowledge and science. They had us usher in a new medical age with the monumental reports that proved the salt vaccine against crippling polyol could be a sensational success. Dr. Salk's own child was one of the two million children involved in tests of his vaccine. Tests which have ended for all time the threat of one of the world's most vicious diseases. These vaccines have been successfully tested by thousands of parents who have permitted their children to participate in the field trial. Behind it all are tests and research in years of development and hope. Do you think that you'll live to see a cure? No. Science moves in a way that's not linear. It can be incremental, punctuated by breakthroughs, back to incremental. Is there any guarantee this will actually work? There is never a guarantee when you're doing a clinical trial. If there was a guarantee, you wouldn't have to do the trial. We just submitted our first IND to the FDA in the United States. That's an investigative new drug application and altogether it's over 8,500 pages. I'm just going to bear off some space so that it doesn't look so awful. Perfect. For me it's only the culmination of a little over three years of work, but for some of my colleagues they've been involved in ViasA for over a decade and their heart and soul professionally has gone into this company and our product. So this is a mock-up and it doesn't contain an actual device, but let me just take a look. Maybe I'm lying to you. It's easier if I take it out of this package. Oh, I lied. So you can see the implant right in there and it contains cells. That one contains cells right there? Yeah. What we're developing is a bio-artificial pancreas that uses stem cells to potentially cure type 1 diabetes. It sounds groundbreaking, but diabetes is complicated. It all starts with the pancreas, the ugliest organ in the body. In type 1 diabetes, the body attacks itself and destroys the cells that produce insulin. And when you don't have insulin, sugar builds up in the blood and it can't get into the cells. It's as vital to the body as oxygen. While people with type 2 diabetes have trouble absorbing insulin, type 1s don't produce any insulin at all. Either way, too much sugar in your blood is toxic. High blood sugars can lead to blindness, kidney failure, strokes, and amputation. Low blood sugars, and you risk unconsciousness and death. So I'm constantly injecting insulin to control the amount of sugar in my blood. Normal blood sugars are flat with the odd spike. My blood sugars look like the Himalaya's. Biosite wants to fix this toxic roller coaster. Program stem cells to make insulin. Put them in a high-tech tea bag and plant them into humans. And over time, they'll replace the damaged cells in the body. Okay, Jay, ready? Seal. We can do as much testing on the bench and in animals as we want. And we still don't know how it'll work in people. And that's why we're all here, to make it work in people. Okay, so today is our 30-day clock on the IMD. I was hoping to make this a very suspenseful meeting, but somehow having bowels of champagne, and I guess if the answer was bad, it would have been hard liquor. There are no hold issues, and the clinical trial may proceed. I've been here 12 years. This is my life's work. To see it come this far and officially go into a patient, it's amazing. This is a new frontier. The FDA is understandably concerned about the safety risks associated with any kind of cell therapy, but they recognize that patients need better treatments. It takes 10 to 20 years to develop a new drug, but those are usually drugs that are not that novel. It's a pill you eat it, everyone knows how to do that. This is extremely novel. Nighty night. I don't think anyone knew how long this trial was going to take. We were still in phase one, where scientists test if their product is safe and tolerated by humans. I am sure you were hoping we would have definitive answers for you to film by now. Welcome to the exciting but often frustrating world of biotechnology. It's a critical stage, but it doesn't show if the product is working. Clinical studies like this are set up in phases for very good reason. The first phase is designed to determine basic safety, tolerance, and not put a whole bunch of patients at risk without understanding that it's safe first. The second phase is the most exciting, because that's where you get the data, the proof of concept. Two, three. Then the moment we'd all been waiting for. The FDA gave them the green light to move to phase two of the trial. It was finally time to see if the cells could work in people. How much is writing on this? Everything. Everything. Sorry. Biocite opened seven trial sites in the U.S. and Canada, including one at the University of Minnesota. And that's where we met patient one, Marin. All right. So a little bit of a cliffhanger for you guys. We meet patient one, Marin, and we meet patient two, Greg. And we follow them for a year and a half as they go through the biocite trial. And it was very challenging for these two patients. And maybe I won't reveal what happens to them now. I'm going to keep that as a secret for you guys to watch the film. I don't want to speak for much longer, because I know that Michelle wanted to open it up to Q&A. Perhaps I'll just end by saying that the rollout of the COVID vaccine showed us what was possible, how we could accelerate cure research if we properly supported the science where funding wasn't an obstacle, where there was collaboration between governments and corporations and where there was no shortage of clinical trial patients. So let's end on hope and that we can all benefit from these breakthroughs and that we should all support these scientists and these patients who sacrifice so much for the rest of us. Well, thank you so, so much, Lisa, for first off, for sharing a sneak peek of your film, which our audience might not know, but is not even released to the public yet. So you guys are part of a special group that gets to see a little bit of it in advance. But also for giving us a bit of a glimpse into what a clinical trial looks like and what your life has been like trying to tell this story. So we've got just over 20 minutes left. I'll invite our audience to find the Q&A button, which is along with two speech bubbles at the bottom of your screen. Start throwing in some questions and we'll see how many we can get through. But I'm going to start with one of my questions because I'm the moderator and I have the mic right now. But I wanted to touch more on this, the COVID situation. Like obviously we went from a brand new disease to a vaccine, you know, in an unheard of amount of time, right? And for you, who's been following this clinical trial for years now, is that something that is very frustrating then to say, well, it happened with COVID. Why can't it happen with diabetes and other chronic diseases? Or is it more of a hopeful feeling? Or is there kind of a little bit of both mixed in and there? Right. No, that's an excellent question. I would look at it as a more hopeful takeaway than one of resentment that COVID got more attention than diabetes. I think it was really enlightening to me editing this film while all of this was going on. For the past two years, we've been editing this film in my guest room, right? We had to shut down our office. So here we were watching, you know, the news unfold and then the swift rollout of the COVID vaccine. And in fact, it took one of my exact producers saying, Lisa, you need to connect the dots. Like, look at what just happened. And once we did, and we started working also with Faster Cures at the Milken Institute, we realized that there was a great framework or model that could be followed. And what's very heartening for me is that even in this, you know, the state of America and our dysfunctional political system, but there is a bill that's being introduced called ARPA-H that is trying to legislate and institute better funding for this type of promising cure research or vaccine research so that we don't just languish, if you will, after what we've learned from the pandemic. The only other thing I'd add is that I just want to put in context that swift rollout of the vaccine. You probably know that the mRNA technology had been worked on for like a decade by Moderna. And so it was there. It was ready. They had done a lot of work during SARS. You know, that crisis that kind of went away. And then people's interest in their technology went away. Enter COVID-19 and it reignited everything overnight. And it just showed us what could be done in six months. Amazing. It is inspiring to me. Great. I also wanted to ask and, you know, you talked about how for Viacite, they'd shown efficacy. So they'd shown that what they've developed is actually producing insulin in some patients now. So what's next for them? So where they're at with their clinical trial is they have not proven widespread efficacy because their insulin producing cells that have been implanted are still being rejected by the patient, which means they have to take these very strong immunosuppressant drugs, which have side effects, which sometimes even have a negative impact on the cells that have just been implanted. So they haven't hit this out of the park yet. They haven't hit this out of the park. Yes, they've proven efficacy in that insulin that their cells can produce insulin in people, but they haven't proved that it can be sustained. So they're trying to fix the issue of having to be on immunosuppressants by working with CRISPR to gene edit their cells so their cells cannot be, so their cells are invisible to the body's immune system. So that means you don't have to take any rejection drugs. That means there's a lot more chance that the implant is going to thrive, get the oxygen it needs, and not be targeted by the body's response. So that's where they're at. They're starting, this is exciting, in a very big Canadian angle. Health Canada was the first regulatory agency to approve putting these gene-edited cells into people, and that was in February of 2022. It's hard to keep track of time. So this is really exciting. And again, Canada's leading the way. And I do believe it's at the University of Alberta under James Shapiro. He's kind of a rock star in this world. So it sounds like these CRISPR-edited cells will be great because there's a really good chance that they're not going to be rejected, but there's a question in our audience saying, basically, are there any risks to doing these type of... He's calling them blind cells that the body doesn't see. Like, if something goes wrong, will the body not be able to deal with the wrongness of those cells? If that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is a question that Visite gets all the time. And of course, they speak to their clinical trial patients about it. The way their device works is they put the cells into a polymer device that looks like a credit card. These polymer devices can be removed easily via surgery, but they can be removed if there is something that's not going well for the patient. They... I mean, the biggest thing is that the FDA... Well, the FDA has now approved the clinical trial in the United States as well. But the big thing is is that Health Canada and the FDA have approved this trial and they would not have approved this pioneering research unless they knew that it was safe or... Right, or rather, I should fix that. Or if they knew that there was a way to prevent putting a patient in danger by removing the devices. Right. So there is basically like a fail safe there, just in case. That's the word, I guess, I would use. Yeah. A question here about balancing the various iterations of this technology. So we just talked about one iteration. You know, they had a first product, they're making an edit and they're trying it again with a slight upgrade, let's call it. So how do you balance making all these different iterations, all these new versions with the fact that you actually need to stop and wait and see how it works as well? Like how do you balance that timeline and the rush for advance, but also the wait and see to see if it works? That's really a tough thing that the researchers have to balance exactly. There in fact, Visite has three products in the clinic right now, three of them. And so they have to balance, you know, as this question, this person put so eloquently, how on earth can they go to the third iteration if they're still tweaking the second iteration? And that is because there are different variables in these products. So it's almost like a new clinical trial. Does that make sense? So that it's not just a new version of it, it actually has to go in as a new product, a new trial. So what am I trying to say here? So the regulatory agencies have to go through this, they have to look at this new protocol and treat it as such. Does that make sense? So you basically have parallel clinical trial, like similar, but parallel kind of clinical trials going on at the same time and learning lessons from each of them, presumably as well. Right. Yeah. But the point is this, is that they can run in parallel. Right. Okay. Yeah. So you don't have to stop and wait. I guess as we saw also with the COVID vaccine, because there were multiple trials running all at the same time. And then with all the open science that was going on, people were able to learn, as you said, from the failures, the mistakes, kind of the not workings of others. And it got us there, I guess, that much faster. So another question here coming in is the, you mentioned an international component to this research. And they're asking, because you've been involved and you've been all over the world and seeing kind of how this is all going, were there any big takeaways for you about like cure research clinical trial research and the way it's conducted in different countries? No, that's a great question. We didn't do a deep dive into this. We were literally just filming the researchers raising money abroad. So I didn't do a deep dive into how does the funding of cure research in Canada differ from how it's funded in Belgium? I could have gone there, but then there were so many themes in the film to cover already and we wanted to keep it really personal and human that if I had done a deep dive into the different systems, it would have been a survey film, not a verite film. That's fair enough. Is it a topic that interests you maybe for future? Absolutely, absolutely. And I defer to experts. I'm sure there has been good studies on what's the best way or what's a better way of funding cure research. I want to ask about the people who volunteer for clinical trials. I know that there can sometimes be like a stigma almost for signing up for these research trials that have no guarantee of working. What is your takeaway after hearing these stories and sitting with these people who have volunteered for these clinical trials? What's your message? Right. I think the motivation for the patients differed. I think some of them wanted to do it for altruistic reasons, that they realized that what they brought to the table was really important, even if it didn't work for them. It might work for patient 22 down the road and they appreciated that. So there was an understanding and respect for science and a willingness to sacrifice themselves for science. Other people wanted, to be totally honest, this is America. They wanted to get free diabetes supplies because it costs a lot. And when you sign up for a clinical trial like this, you actually get your supplies covered. Thirdly, I think some of the people who signed up just hate type 1 diabetes. They hate the disease, really hate it and they're tired of it. They need this hope too. So it's almost, I don't know if it's cathartic, but by being in a trial like this, there is hope and they can feel the hope. And that makes them perhaps able to handle their disease better. Right, yeah. So I guess a lot of different motivations, depending on who you are. And how would you encourage people external to these trials who maybe are hearing about it or reading in the news? Like how would you encourage them to kind of see really the sacrifices these people are making? Well, I guess watch this film. You will see writ large what sacrifice they made for people like myself. I think there just has to be a deeper understanding of what these trial patients do for us. During COVID, I mean, you probably remember these clinical trial participants talking to the news, talking to reporters and saying, yeah, I'm not sure what's in this. I don't know if it's a placebo. I don't know what exactly is being injected in me, but I'm willing to do it because I want to help. And it's stories like that that I think educate the public about the important sacrifices that people make. I think in terms of if there's any interest in signing up for trials, I can speak to how to do it in the United States. You go to the NIH National Institute of Health website and you can sign up for clinical trials there. I think it's just really coming away appreciating what these brave people have done. Another question in chat seems to relate a bit to the COVID again. And COVID was cured, not cured. A vaccine for COVID was developed so quickly because it was seen as important. It was a global pandemic and they mobilized all of the people and all of the money and all of the manufacturers and et cetera. And even now that we've seen that it can be done, we're not seeing it being done for something like diabetes. So how do you make diabetes like it's important? Like a lot of people are affected by diabetes. I would argue probably everybody knows somebody affected by diabetes. So how I guess do we make it seem as important as COVID and how do we mobilize the research and the pharmaceutical companies who may not see any financial interest in this and like how do we light that fire? What an excellent question, really excellent question. Diabetes is a pandemic. 6.7 million people died from it in 2021. 6.7 million people around the world. I hope that we're not immune to understanding what that number is. It's the population of Madrid that died. The health expenditures are huge looking after diabetes. The mental health component, the physical component, the loss of work. It is a pandemic and it needs to be taken seriously. Second half of the question. So how are we going to have it taken? How do we make people understand and how do we encourage people to really take it as seriously as they did the COVID-19 pandemic? Well, again, I speak from an American perspective, but you can lobby the government. You can lobby your members of Congress, members of Parliament. If there is an opportunity, if someone is speaking out and saying, you know, I want to sponsor, I want to introduce a bill that supports cure research and biotech innovation, you know, at an early phase. And I, again, I speak from an American perspective, but go out and support that. Go call your Senator. Yeah, I guess we have a Senate, of course. We'll call your MPs. Yeah, go call your MPs. Lobby, talk to your friends, you know. Get a conversation going about it. Regarding, like, diabetes, there's a huge stigma attached to being someone with diabetes. There really is. I look healthy. As I say in the intro of the film, I'm not healthy. I'm not. You turn me inside out. I'm not doing so well, but you can't see that. So I think that makes the outside world look at me and say, oh, just inject your insulin and watch what you eat and you'll be fine. And it's not like that. And I think we've discussed that a lot in this presentation. I think it takes people being willing to talk about it. I think it takes people with diabetes to be honest about it. Because so often people hide behind the facade of normalcy. And it doesn't do anything to help the community find a cure. We have to say, as a group, this disease is bad, really bad. It needs to be cured. Yeah, I think so much is about getting the word out there and then having a call to action. And in our film at the end, we do have a call to action, which is five years is now. Support faster cures. Go to beyondtype1.org forward slash cure. And then we show many ways of how to get involved. But now I really appreciate the question. It's kind of like the big question. Yeah, well, I hope your film reaches enough people that that fire is lit. That would be my big wish for you in this film and the legacy it leads. Someone down here is asking, this film is done, but of course Biasite's journey is not. Do you have plans to keep filming and have a human trial too? Maybe once we get this film rolled out, I'll answer that question. I certainly like Biasite. I like the senior management. They've been incredibly patient and open with us and the stuff we filmed. I couldn't believe some of the stuff they let us film. I don't know if I have it in me to do a sequel. But maybe I won't have to. Fingers crossed, right? It'll just be like the next headline and then within a year, everyone will be cured. So that leads us nicely into I think what's going to be our last question of tonight. But if funding was not a factor, if the amount of researchers was not a factor, if finding people to participate in clinical trials was not a factor, can we cure diabetes in five years? Oh yeah, hands down. I think it should have been cured yesterday. Oh, I fully believe that. No, absolutely. And Biasite's not the only person in the sandbox. There are a lot of high-level research being done, including in Canada, CERNOVA in London, Ontario, who are really doing great work. And there's a Harvard lab run by Doug Mountain. It's called Vertex, and they were just on the cover of the New York Times for proving in the very first patient that not only do their cells work, but they got the patient was off their insulin, 90% off their insulin within, you know, I think it was eight weeks. That's incredible. It's going to work. It really is. And I tell this to people who are newly diagnosed and really depressed. I tell this more to the people who've had it, like the veterans like me. I'm not a veteran, but you know what I mean. I'm a cynical kind of journalist, you know, but I do believe it's possible. My son asks me, my little baby son, you're seven. Mommy, when will this disease be cured? When will the flame of hope go out? And I do the math. I'm like, okay, you're seven. So when you're 11, I don't want to give false hope, but the science is the science is there. Well, I think you, whether or not you meant to, I think you've given us all, hopefully a little bit of hope. So unfortunately, that's all we have time for for questions that is coming off on the hour mark. So first and foremost, I want to say a huge thank you to you, Lisa, for for pulling back that curtain a little bit for a lot of us and showing, you know, what it's like to be involved in a clinical trial and what it's like to be a filmmaker who's, you know, trying to capture this story. I'd like to let our audience know that the Human Trial is being released theatrically in the U.S. and Canada on June 24th, that's next month, and will be available for community screenings and events via Roco Films. In January 2023, it's going to be released on iTunes and other video subscription services. And if you want to know if your particular video subscription service is going to host it, you can go to thehumantrial.com website. Right now, and you can find that in the meantime, if you want to follow Lisa and her story or find out more about the film or what you can do to support diabetes research, flip through all the pages on thehumantrial.com. Alternatively, you can check out some of Lisa's other work, including the feature length documentary, Piece by Piece, Women on the Frontlines, which was co-directed by Lisa back in 2003 and was filmed in Afghanistan, Argentina, Burundi, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and in the U.S. If you did have a good time, I hope you consider joining us for future Curiosity on Stage events. This summer, we will feature two events on accessible and inclusive technologies featuring global leaders in accessible arts-related content and an innovative machinist who creates the world's best adaptive downhill racing bikes. You need more information, please check the museum's website, write into our info line, or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn. On behalf of myself and Lisa, the Ingenium Foundation and the Canada Science and Technology Museum, thank you so much for joining us today. I want to say a sincere thank you and see you next time.