Adam Torres and Eddy Agbo discuss FII PRIORITY.
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Show Notes:
Listen to FII PRIORITY coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres and Dr. Eddy Agbo, Founder & CEO at Fyodor Biotechnologies, explore global health innovation and FII PRIORITY.
About Dr. Eddy Agbo
Eddy is a scientist, entrepreneur, and global health leader with extensive experience in biomedical research, biotechnology and executive leadership. He leads Fyodor’s efforts to deliver innovative, accessible diagnostics, medicines and healthcare solutions. He has held research and leadership roles at Johns Hopkins University, Utrecht University, and Cangen Biotechnologies Corp, and served on Maryland’s Life Sciences Advisory Board overseeing a $1.3B biotech investment fund. Eddy earned a PhD in Molecular Genetics from Utrecht University, an MS in Biotechnology from Wageningen University, and a DVM from the University of Ibadan.
About Fyodor Biotechnologies
Fyodor Biotechnologies is on a mission to transform global healthcare delivery through innovative, patient-centered solutions. The company is best known for its flagship product, the Urine Malaria Test (UMT)—the world’s first and only non-blood dipstick test that quickly determines if a fever is due to malaria using just a few drops of urine. No blood, no equipment, and no reagents are needed—just a fast, reliable result within minutes, similar to a pregnancy test.
Fyodor’s work is driven by a commitment to make healthcare more accessible and efficient, especially in underserved areas. By bringing diagnostic tools directly to patients, the company aims to save lives on a global scale.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome each to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on BR Guest to apply. All right, so today’s guest is Dr. Eddy Agbo, and he’s founder and CEO over at Bio Door Biotechnologies.
Eddie, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Adam. Glad being here. All right. So excited for this interview for everybody that’s been listening and following this series for a while. This is part of our FII Institute coverage series where I, I recently went out to the FII Miami event, and I’ll tell you, I was blown away.
There was just so many amazing individuals I met that I said, Hey, I gotta start doing some interviews. I gotta cover this story. Eddie, now correct me if I’m wrong, you were at the Miami one, right? ’cause I’ve been covering a couple of stories now. So you were at the Miami one, right? Yes, I was at the Miami event, yes.
Now, was this your first time attending or have you been to other FII events or get togethers before? Well, I was actually, I wouldn’t invite that kind of regular to the F II event, but this was my first one attend. Kind of just worked out fine this time around. So I mean, like I was blown away.
what surprised you about it? ’cause I, have a lot of opinions of this with too, but what I know it won’t be my last one attending. What, surprised you or what was interesting? So, what surprised me most about it was kind of just the, p into the future that this gathering is about. I mean it essentially the pace for the world economy, the world politics.
Technology and innovation. And then the second aspect is really bringing in people who are at the frontiers of that future who are making that future happen now. Hmm. That was exciting. Yeah. I got that impression too, whether it was the programming, whether it was the level of individuals, obviously the president was there and and you know, many, many big CEOs that we all know their names like Elon Musk.
I mean, there was, you know, a lot of in interesting people there. But then also I, I noticed like a lot of decision makers. You know, some conferences you go to with, no offense to another conference, but you may see upper management, some other C-suite, but like to see all the, the CEOs out there, I was like, wow, this is interesting.
Right. Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, you, this is really, as I said, where you, you know. The future is set out and, mm-hmm. Those who would make it happen. Also really present to discuss how that would happen. Yeah. It’s exciting. Now, I, I do wanna maybe switch topics briefly here, and I want, to talk more about what you’re doing over at fi at Fido Biotechnology.
So I understand you’ve spent you know, some of your work developing a urine malaria test, which is really a groundbreaking diagnostic tool. What inspired you to focus in this area and can you tell us a little bit more? Yes. So Adam, I grew up in a small village in southeastern Nigeria called bu, MBU.
And as a kid you grew up with, you saw your mates die from. Particular disease that was on everybody’s mind. Malaria. Mm. You know, many, many, I mean, I survived obviously but many years after I saw that many things are still the same. For example, if someone had a fever when I was growing up, the local doctor was just a patent medicine vendor who had really no training in pharmacy.
Just some months or a year of training on how to dispense medications. Mm-hmm. That was a village doctor at the time. And many years after that decade later, in many villages in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, things still remain essentially the same. So I kind of decided to begin to look at this man, for example, was overly complex in, diagnosing and managing.
So my key idea was how can we diagnose malaria, like a pregnancy test? That’s simple. We donate blood, anyone can do it anywhere, anytime. That was the impact. Mm-hmm. And so where did this journey of developing this, where did this take you? Like, tell me a little bit more about the story and where you’re at today.
So what it, where it took me was and as I said, this experience as a kid stayed. You know, it’s usually a lot of traumatic things stay with, as a kid, even into adult school. So my training education not necessarily perfectly planned but it kind of led me to, in direction of. Global health and getting the appropriate, training and experience and work ethic to be able to address big problems, mm-hmm. And I kind of see myself as almost cut out for beginning to really look at big problems at how to address them. Within the context of not just the science mm-hmm. But the strategy, the storytelling, and thinking about it as a systemic issue rather than just a disease intervention issue.
Mm-hmm. For example, when you think of malaria diagnostics, it should be very misleading to think of that, let’s say our tool, the urine malaria test. Thinking about that just as a diagnostic tool alone, that should work everywhere. There are other systems issues, healthcare systems, issues that have to be factored in to make it a successful tool for intervention.
And those are the things that I learned over time, which being brought to bear as we deployed this to LA across Africa, rest of the world. Wow. Speaking of global healthcare and really your focus on this overall, what are some of the the barriers you see to innovation in global health and maybe what are some ideas on how they can be overcome?
Yeah, so one of the key things I really see in global health, it’s supply driven, what I consider a supply driven type of intervention rather than knee driven. And that need driven model, I believe would require that, folks in the global south where we’re still dealing with major global health issues need to be better represented in the product designs, design decisions, what interventions are needed.
And then we also need to begin to encourage incontinent type of capacity building, not just on the surface of it, but really developing long term strategies to help incentivize local r and d that will start to take these issues up from ground up rather than from top down. so. One of such one thing that could even happen, you know, why don’t we have a global health innovation packed, for example where have multiple countries could share IP r and d experience, r and d capacity, pool procurement for various tools.
Right now with the changes, with the US government focus in global health countries now have to begin to. Still with their own needs. Many countries in Africa relied entirely on global donors for their malaria intervention activities for their HIV intervention activities. These are huge issues in many parts of, emerging markets, especially Africa and some other places.
So, such a path, such an innovation path could be very helpful. In driving progress along these these lines and then pulling resources together. Hmm. Eddie, what are your next steps? I’m just curious. So obviously you have your work in what you’re doing in malaria. What are your next steps?
Like what, what kind of other projects or just things are you working on in general? What are your next steps? Interesting. So, as we drive the deployment of this because we really, we really wanna transform the way malaria is tested and treated globally. Yeah. We wanna see a situation where people at home, anyone at home can test for malaria.
Mm-hmm. This is kind of driving our vision as a company toward point of need. Not necessarily point of care, but point of need interventions. We wanna see that not just in diagnostics, but we wanna see that also in provision of care. So we’re thinking of adopting new technologies towards care.
For example, AI powered augmented reality enabled type of virtual hospital system for primary care services. We’re already conceptualizing that we are driving further non-blood testing as a tool because, you know, blood testing introduces a level of complexity in terms of code use. But we are champions of kind of enabling the patient to take charge of their health on their own home-based diagnostics.
Those are kind of our areas of focus now and then co-creating ecosystems where innovations can be born and scaled and owned locally by folks and peers within the regions where these mostly, so rather than exporting solutions, we want to build out those solutions from ground up locally.
Man, I love it. Those are delivers we’re trying to push right now. I love it. Big dreams and big work. Eddie, I’m glad I met you. this has really been a lot of fun having you on the show today. If somebody’s listening or watching this and if they wanna follow up where they wanna learn more about your work and continue to follow your work what’s the best way for them to do that?
Sure. Please reach out to us. We are fido bio.com. I’ll spell that out. dot comfy the bio.com. You just email us at [email protected]. Wonderful. And for everybody listening, just so you know, I’ll definitely put the links to the, website in the show notes so that you can just click on it and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well.
So, again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Eddie. Thanks again for coming on the show, Adam. Thank you so very much for having me. Appreciate that and appreciate your.
