Adam Torres and Jason Sawyer discuss Quantum BioPharma.
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Show Notes:
Quantum BioPharma is developing a portfolio of products including Quantum’s Lucid-MS drug development and their drink, unbuzzd. In this episode, Adam Torres and Jason Sawyer, Head of Finance & M&A at Quantum BioPharma, explore Quantum BioPharma.
About Quantum BioPharma
Quantum BioPharma is at the forefront of biotechnology, committed to advancing scientific innovation and transforming lives. Our groundbreaking research is dedicated to the development of life-saving treatments for neurodegenerative diseases, with a focus on Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Through our unwavering commitment to excellence, we are pioneering the development of Lucid-MS, a potential therapeutic aimed at remyelinating neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Our vision is to restore abilities and improve the quality of life for those affected by MS.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you 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, be our guest to apply. All right. So did I have Jason Sawyer on the line and he’s head of finance and MNA at quantum biopharma, Jason, welcome to the show.
Thanks very much for having me, Adam. It’s a pleasure to be here. All right, Jason. So we got a lot to talk about today. Of course, we’re going to get into quantum biopharma. I want to get into what the company’s doing, how you’re helping with MS. I want to get into, you developed a drink that helps people sober up.
More quickly, so we have to talk about that. And then also there’s a, large lawsuit that you’re part of. I mean, a huge lawsuit, a 700 million dollars plus against some banks and we’ll get into that as well. But just to get us kicked off, first off, how did you get into this space? Like, tell me a little bit more about how and by your background and where you got started.
Well, my background is 30 years in alternative investments venture capital, private equity and the hedge fund space. I’ve been a founder. I’ve been an investor and advisor to startups to Canadian hedge funds as they. Attempt to expand their asset bases globally raised in total across that universe 5 billion, but I became an investor in this company early on and it’s been on my radar, its original iteration, which was in the cannabis space and wisely moved out of that.
We can talk about it a little more detail, but I tend to get involved in stories. Early that have massive upside that have accomplished competent and very dedicated with tremendous conviction management teams. And I was invited to participate in this company to get involved and look deeper as it transitioned.
There was a name change recently back in. August of 2024, there was a consolidation, a change in the cap structure, all to prepare for the next phase of or phases, some of which you outlined as you opened the the podcast here. And that’s how I got involved. I’ve known the principles for 15 years in one case and over 10 in the other.
And so I love stories like this when you start as an investor and somehow they drag you in, they suck you in, they’re like, come on, you gotta like a lot of different things you could have done with your expertise and background. What made this like the opportunity that you would, you know, take a title, you’d spend a lot of time on and would occupy a lot of your days.
What made this so special? Well the, the principles here were incredibly well timed with the front end of the cannabis story that, that obviously capital markets and financing wise came out of of Canada after Uruguay, I think it was originally legalized medical cannabis as a country.
Canada created a regime , and this is one of the companies that was perfectly timed and entering the marketplace and long story short, that market turned over, there was we’ll call it irrational exuberance around it and literally. Any and every company that from from the really great ones to the to the kind of thrown together ones experienced you know, a massive sell off after that irrational exuberance left.
And in this unique set of circumstances, the principles here had the foresight. To see it coming. They saw the glu coming and they said, really, this was about health and wellness for us on the front end. How can we continue on in that business line, but look for novel assets for innovative science and stay in the space and really transition to becoming a cutting edge biotech company, pharma company, drug development.
Mm-hmm . Looking for problems out there and creating . Innovative solutions to them. So the cannabis assets were sold off, and the company went forward in acquiring talent and science, and it is now positioned on the cutting edge of a couple areas that again, you mentioned at outset. Tell me about quantum lucid MS drug, like in that development.
So lucid MS is a patented new chemical entity the rights to which quantum owns entirely. The world class science team at quantum led by Drs. Kotra and Krushensky. Dr. Kotra’s name is on this patent. Probably 40 years of science leading up to 14 years of pre clinical trials. This compound that’s been created.
And in our phase one human testing clinical trials, the sentinel dose really literally the first time a human’s ever ingested this particular chemical compound. Done. So something brand new cutting edge is a neuro protective compound that so far in preclinical models has proven to prevent and reverse myelin degradation, which is the root cause.
There are theories on how it happens and the process that’s a root cause of several central nervous system disorders and MS, multiple sclerosis and the almost 3 million people worldwide that suffer from MS in its various forms is our focus. and this molecule as we’re extremely hopeful here and moving this year toward a clinical phase two trial has proven in clinical mouse models to.
Stop and even reverse myelin degradation and this could carry over to Parkinson’s Alzheimer’s other CNS oriented diseases, but it’s shown incredible promise And can that mean in the marketplace like just kind of you’re obviously looking at this closer But what can this mean in the marketplace or what could the opportunity there be?
This is a multi billion dollar drug candidate as we move toward and go through the regulatory process for creating, commercializing a drug, which we intend to do with, partnerships. this is not the type of thing that as a nano cap company.
You know, trading on NASDAQ, when people are looking at these things and say, what’s the next big discovery that results in a massive financial win, this has the potential to be that discovery. And, the answer to your question is we’ve commissioned a study on it and by the time. This drug were to enter the market.
Our intention here would be the existing therapeutics are typically something that that a patient would take once a week. It’s injected and it has significant negative side effects. We’re talking about an oral therapeutic here. That would be daily. That is not immuno modulating or suppressive, like everything else in the marketplace.
So needless to say. Solving this problem or reducing all of those negative effects and being able to treat someone and possibly even cure them is a multi billion dollar shot on goal. Yeah. Amazing. Let’s let’s talk about some more of what’s in the portfolio over there.
So you’re developing a drink, helps people quickly sober up lately. that’s an interesting, how’d that come about? Yeah, well there might be a market for that, right? Yeah, exactly. That’s what I was thinking. And actually I’m recording this within today from Las Vegas, so you got me thinking about it.
Yeah, well, not LA, but I’m like, I, I, I’m looking around at the Bellagio right now. I’m like, yeah, there’s a market. Yeah, there’s a, there’s a bit of a market in, Vegas alone. , I’d love to know , just what the Vegas market is. And I, remember , long before I got involved with quantum and when I was spending some more time in Vegas myself, you know, you’d hear about these mobile units that had come and give you IV.
Basically by hangover, you know injection to try and get your electrolytes, you know, electrolytes back into the body, et cetera. And electrolytes are great and they’re, they’re a component of the, the unbuzzed formulation. But so 10 years ago I was might be 10, maybe a little less than 10. I was hearing about a hangover remedies and, mobile, units and nurses that would come by and help you nurse you through your Vegas hangover.
And of course. Recently, as a part of the overall zeitgeist, we’ve heard the U. S. Surgeon General come forward and say, not unlike tobacco in the sixties or seventies, whenever the first warnings were placed on packaging, and I know there was, there’s obviously a lot of involvement there from U. S. Congress, et cetera.
You now have the U. S. Surgeon General saying you know, a lot of what we knew or thought we knew about alcohol and all the studies we’ve done you know, leads us to believe that we should be a little bit more careful. We should be aware of some of effects. So that just happened to come about now after again, a world class research team at quantum digging into this, this problem, problem being twofold.
Really, if you’re too buzzed, if you’re too intoxicated, how do you come down from that? How do you get your blood alcohol content? down from too high to closer zero and normal and do it faster. And there’s never been anything invented or clinically tested, as we’ve recently done that has proven in a clinical environment.
to get that blood alcohol content down a lot faster than your body can do normally. So the formulation that the team at Quantum has put together, has, studied and now filed for a patent on, et cetera, and gone through just like this were a drug, although it’s not, this is, we’re talking a beverage here, but there’s been a clinical trial conducted on this, the results of which The world’s going to be aware of soon as we publish in and see those peer reviewed in the next 60 to 90 days.
But that was the objective. And it was also how do you have the population that likes to imbibe feeling getting back to mental clarity and full cognition, faster motor skills, get your brain sharp, but wake up the next day feeling a lot less sluggish, hungover dehydrated, all of those things.
And so the formulation was specifically designed. And formulation was specifically designed. From scratch with the idea of accelerating the metabolism of alcohol in the liver and also Adding nootropics and things that stimulate the brain and get you back to mental clarity and losing that fog being able to speak more clearly walk a straighter line, whatever the case may be and to do it faster.
And so this is. proven to do exactly that. it’s going to be interesting. And, is the size for what you can talk about? Is it like when you say it’s a drink are you picking, am I picturing one of those like shots you take the little small ones of my picturing, like energy drink kind of like feel or like, he, what do you mean by drink?
That, gives a lot of, visuals for me. Yeah, absolutely. So the, the current form is a powder pack that you can put into, ideally 12 ounces of water into a normal bottle and drink it. Ideally it’s something other than an alcoholic beverage, right? That is, that is true. That’s an entirely different study where where you drink it simultaneously and see if you can be really healthy and still have the effect that you’re looking from looking for from the alcohol.
But we soft launch the powder sticks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Especially today. We soft launch, the product really in the tail end of 24 and powder sticks. And the intention here is in the first half of this year to launch a 12 ounce. Can clear eye citrus is the first is already on the market.
It is. It is in the market. You can go to, unbuzz. com. And that’s without an, e unbuzz. com. And we’ve had the product on Amazon and lots and lots of interest more consistent following with really with not a lot of promotion of it on social media, et cetera.
Most interestingly, As I mentioned earlier, quantum is an R and D focused company and develops these innovation, innovative solutions. But we partner, we tend to want to offload some of the risk of taking them to market. And on the pharma side, it’s very expensive to develop a drug. We’ve had tremendous inbound calls to talk about what we’re developing and partnering with us and bring in some capital to, share in that risk and in that upside with unbuzz the team at quantum.
Went out and formed a relationship with a massive CEO success story in the U. S. Jerry David, who was responsible for taking a company called Celsius Holdings. You may be familiar with the Celsius beverages. From nowhere, from zero to beyond hero, it peaked last year, I think at a 21 billion dollar valuation, but Quantum formed a relationship with Jerry.
And has ultimately outlicensed the Unbuzz formulation, and so Cellynutrition that has the rights to to this product in the consumer market, Quantum maintained and reserved all rights around a use of the formulation in a medical environment meaning hospitals, et cetera, but in terms of this consumer product, Jerry David and the famous Kevin Harrington one of the original sharks on shark tank and Kevin drove the digital social campaigns that that helped Celsius grow so quickly and turn into, I think, a billion and a half dollars or so a year revenue company.
And we’ve done it the same way. We’re really emulating that story meaning that we’re doing clinical trials around this product just the way that Celsius went and proved clinically that their that their beverage actually allowed you to burn more calories just by drinking it. You know, it was, there was no cow.
There was low Cal and then there was negative calorie and they went to market with some real science. And so that team is behind this story is, that they are the drivers of that story now and taking, you know, what, going to be the 12 ounce can here very shortly out to market. And we’re really excited about that.
Yeah, that is exciting. And I just looked it up. So it’s right there on Amazon. So everybody listening, if you just put in unbuzzed on Amazon, U N B U Z Z D, it’ll pop right up. And then I looked at the reviews, got some good reviews there. And then I seen in the first smiling face on your reviews I saw there, we got Zappy on there with his smiling face.
That’d be the front of the show that Zappy says it’s good, it’s good. That’s all I got. There you go. I couldn’t, I couldn’t agree more. Absolutely amazing. Well, one other topic I do want to cover while I have you on the line, Jason, and I don’t know how much of it you can talk about, can’t talk about it, but talk to me about the lawsuit and what’s going on right now, because it’s kind of unprecedented.
Yeah, it is. It’s one of the largest of its kind. And for anybody listening to the show who invests in small caps nano cap, you know, micro cap, small cap, it varies from Canada to the U. S. But I think a lot I’m certain now that a lot of the investing public is aware of the systemic problem around major manipulation of small cap stocks, especially when they, have liquidity and they’re attracting attention to people who are small.
You know, taking that part of their speculative portfolio and whether it’s 000, they’re investing in cutting edge companies like quantum biopharma and, ultimately we realized not too long ago prior to me coming along. But as a shareholder, I was aware of this. I was seeing it in the market. There was massive manipulation, spoofing, counterfeiting, which basically means selling a share you don’t own.
This is all done systemically through various forms of And so I guess long story short it’s very difficult to ascertain what’s happening in your market. If you’re liquid and you have 30, shareholders the way that, that Quantum’s predecessor named company did trading under the symbol huge.
And we’ve actually gone out now to solicit and we’re getting. literally hundreds of responses from people who’ve been damaged by the naked shorting, counterfeiting, spoofing, manipulation, and we filed against two banks RBC and CIBC in their U. S. counterparts and others that are to be named.
We filed a 700 million, that’s now over a billion Canadian dollar lawsuit for the damage that’s been done to our company and to our shareholder base. There are people like Terry Lynch, Save Canadian Mining. Very well regarded, successful Canadian entrepreneurs Agoracom now following our story and, conducting interviews with the, thousands of people who were damaged by this.
But we at no cost to the company now because we spent the money to do all the discovery, hire the best lawyers in the business who’ve had success in, really running down these bad actors and, so in the Southern District of New York we’ve now filed that 700 million lawsuit and we’re asking anybody damaged by it who are shareholders between the period, you can see quantum versus banks on our website, click on it if you’re already a shareholder.
But if not follow the story. And participate in some of the forums because this has been massively damaging to the Canadian economy because the majority of Canadian venture capital happens to the capital markets that the institutional venture capital in Canada is tiny compared to the U. S.
And it really needs to be a lot bigger. But it is the every day accredited investor. Investing early in companies like Quantum and ultimately the CSC and the TSX Venture where these companies are listed and the regulators are doing as good as they can. And they’re really, I think they’re very focused on this now and listening to what companies have to say because they’re being damaged every day.
Through effectively. What’s is criminal action? There’s no question about that. So we’ll go through a process that we hope results in injustice for the company and the shareholders. But a billion dollars is a big number and that was not arbitrary. There’s a full damage model on that, and it’s an A plus case.
It’s been taken on contingency by some of the most effective lawyers in this space. So, if it takes three years and 50 million bucks, it doesn’t really matter to us, but that’s how strong legal counsel feels this case is against the bad actors. Well, Jason, this has been great having you on the show today.
I’ve really enjoyed learning more about what you’re doing over at Quantum Biopharma and of course, what you just mentioned about the lawsuit, I’m going to start following that one as well and keeping track, but that’s super interesting. And if somebody does want to.
Connect with you and your team, whether it’s based on the products. I know that we can get buzzed from Amazon. As I mentioned, it’s real super easy to put in there. But if they want to connect, That’s unbuzzed Adam. You can, you can probably get, you can probably get buzzed through Amazon as well, but unbuzzed, we’re going to, we’re going to forgive you.
You’re in Vegas and it’s yeah. Well, well, you didn’t send me any. That’s what it is. Come on, man. We can, we can make that happen. I didn’t even know there was, it was out yet. None. There you go. We’ll figure. Yeah. That’s awesome. So, if somebody does want to connect, how do they do that? How do they connect?
Quantumbiopharma. com is our site and on there you’ll see everything you need to see about the company including our contact email addresses to get a hold of us if you’re a prospective investor, an existing investor cause I’m sure that there are some listening today.
And in addition to that, the stock symbol, QNTM on NASDAQ, QNTM for quantum, take a look at it and we’re always happy to engage by email or telephone and talk about all the things we can talk about that are in the public domain about the company and to encourage people to become a shareholder as all of our platforms evolve.
Amazing. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the links in the show notes so you can just click on the links 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, be sure to 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 in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and Jason, man, appreciate you. Thanks for coming on. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Take care.