You may have heard of startup ideas, but this ‘mending the broken hearts by Ajan reginald, is certainly the most unique amongst those.
Looking into the medical terminology, yes they are.
Heart disease impact more than 30 million people across the globe and this comes as one of the leading causes of the 4 million deaths in Europe only, on an annual basis. Well, it’s not just about the Europe and the demon has bitten almost every country across the globe.
But as we talk about the solution, we must mention Ajan Reginald who comes as the founder and CEO of Celixir, a biotech firm founded in 2009 in order to experiment with the role of stem cells in curing the damaged heart cells.
It was my dream to start a company that melds great science with great business to produce great benefits,” quoted Ajan Reginald.
It must be noted that his partner in the same project is none other than the Noble laureate Professor Sir Martin Evans, a who was the firm person to isolate embryonic stem cells at Cambridge University way back in the 1980s.
“Martin has a vast depth of understanding, expertise, and intuition, all of which are fantastic leadership qualities. But he also brings strong contributory assets that make him a brilliant person to start a company with,” stated Ajan Reginald.
For that initial phase of six months, those were the only two people in the whole company. “We were a genuine start-up, doing everything ourselves: designing experiments, registering the company, raising funds, and setting up the website. We were certainly unique in that we had a Nobel Prize winner answering the phones.”
Ever since then, Celixir has located various ways to provide revolutionary medical solutions in order to treat various health ailments.
“We’re treating people who have a life expectancy of less than one year—with 70 percent one-year mortality,” said Ajan Reginald Celixir.
And that’s where his dream of “great science” is coming into picture.
CTL’s very own cell therapy comes along with some unique properties. “It’s a paradigm-shifting technology. Today’s medicines can only keep a patient from getting worse. We’re looking, for the first time, at a medicine that is able to regenerate a damaged organ.”
Heart failure comes over once the person has experienced heart attack and as a result, the arteries of a person’s heart gets blocked. Eventually, the heart muscle of the person starts damaging and creates a nonfunctioning scar tissue. If not treated well, the same tissue starts expands, which then leads to a heart failure with a big chance of death in the coming years.
CTL’s stem-cell therapy can then be infused into the same scar tissue to minimize the size of the scar, trigger the repair whilst improving the overall ability of heart to function. This then eliminate the possibility of a heart attack in the coming future.
Even though there are certain other biotech firms which are working on towards the production of the stem cells to treat various diseases-like along infection or a joint problem altogether —CTL is quite unique and it works quite perfectly to discover and isolate heart-specific stem cells.
The firm has already gone through successive clinical trials, bringing on Ajan’s vision of great medical science forward.
The rapidly growing high-tech stem-cell market is all set to reach the target of around $20 billion in the coming five years and CTL rightly expect to up the ante in the coming times.
“The fact that we met our goal in such a short time shows that exceptional science for the benefit of society is an exciting investment proposition. This outcome is consistent with my BCG experience: clients with a focus first and foremost on quality produced highly differentiated products with demonstrable benefits, and profits followed. BCG gave me the analytical skills to understand these important drivers of great companies; hopefully I can replicate these characteristics in our small firm.”Ajan stated.
In CTL’s case, signifying benefits further comes with meticulous demands in w way that it create a bigger value or solution for all the heart patients around. “Scrupulousness in value-generation for our patients translates into value-generation for our shareholders,” Ajan Reginald Celixir says.
Apart from the Noble laureate Sir Martin Evans, CTL’s leadership team contain some of the other renowned faces like Rhodri Morgan, a former first minister of Wales, Mubasher Sheikh, a former transplant surgeon and the existing chief of Permira health care, and Lord Digby Jones, a former UK minister of state for trade and development.
“It’s important to surround you with smart, critical people and to listen to them. Again, this is something I learned at BCG. I’m fortunate to have an exceptional board and executive team, and I am careful to listen, but ultimately I’m responsible for the decisions, good or bad. And I’m happy to make those calls.”Ajan stated
Ajan likens co-relates his role in the management to the position of a central midfielder in field hockey. (It must be noted that he represents the England Masters at the international level.) “In other words,” he says, “I’m expected to see everything, anticipate everything, and cover every inch of the pitch. I’ve got to be a total team player—attacking, defending, and fulfilling whatever role is required by the team.”
“CTL is like most biotech companies in that it requires a CEO to understand and connect the science with the biotech business,” says Ajan Reginald. “However, where CTL may be different is the dual-fold novelty and ambiguity of both our field of regenerative medicine and CTL’s unique approach. The novel approach in an unproven field and being at the fore-front is our core motive. There is no path to follow. Therefore, we believe an in-depth level of science and business expertise is necessary to make these critical (and novel) decisions. “
“BCG was the best preparation for this role. I found my BCG experience very challenging and the hardest job I’ve ever done. But in hindsight, it was great training. The intellectual capacity needed, the speed of thought and execution required, and the unrelenting pressure and ‘stretch’ is how I developed my capacity to perform critical operations under high stress. BCG trained me to think and to work in a high-performance team. I learned to be data driven and to recognize excellent analysis and the singular value of insight from that analysis. Ultimately, leaving BCG was right for me. But the hard-won BCG skills gave me the ultimate confidence to use data to make the most critical decisions.”
“My experiences from high-performance sports teams and BCG are complementary. High-level hockey is fast and dynamic; tactical thinking on the fly is very hard. But for me, the single well-executed tactical decision that wins the game is compelling. In contrast, business is more strategic and tactical, and there’s more time to think. However, it’s much more difficult to produce ‘game winners’ in business, and it’s much harder to build a high-performance team. That may be because the time frames are longer, prolonged years of rigor are required, and the rewards are less connected with actions.”
“When we started CTL, we decided to combine the teamwork of high-performance sports with the strategy and execution required to excel in business. Therefore, our team is nontraditional—perhaps to match our nontraditional scientific approach.
All of that, as he said, has contributed in the success of CTL.
“If your high-performance team can work synergistically, excellence is a more likely outcome—be it at BCG, international hockey, or a biotech firm. I truly believe there are few limitations on the productivity of such organizations. You also need luck, however, and then you just might develop the world’s first regenerative medicine.”
CTL is currently based in Cardiff in the UK and got 30 employees. The firm holds more than 100 patents, and currently associated with some of the major labs in one of the topmost universities at Oxford, Toronto, Denmark, Greece, and China.
“Our goal is to treat 100,000 critically ill patients within the next five years,” Ajan Reginald concluded. “Realizing the great responsibility of lifesaving medicines, we focus on bringing Heartcel to market rapidly. It’s an amazing time—simultaneously frightening, humbling, and awe-inspiring.”