An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Doing things right is hard. To create something special is hard work. It takes close to a decade to become a surgeon, years of hard work to develop a drug, and many failures along the way for both.
As a part of my series about “Big Ideas That Might Change The World In The Next Few Years” I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr George Magrath.
Dr George Magrath, 38, is the CEO of Lexitas, a 140-person company which partners with pharmaceutical firms to develop novel eye care drugs by running clinical trials.
Dr Magrath is a trained ophthalmologist who, despite his busy day-to-day work leading Lexitas, still takes one day out every week to maintain his practice and treat patients with rare eye conditions. In fact, he is the only physician in his home state of South Carolina with fellowship training in treating cancers in and around the eye.
Dr Magrath has an extensive medical and business background, having studied at the Medical University of South Carolina for an internship in general surgery and a residency in ophthalmology. He also completed a fellowship in ocular oncology at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia. Dr Magrath also has an MBA from The Citadel and a Masters in applied economics from Johns Hopkins University.
Following his studies, Dr Magrath worked as an equity analyst at Edison Investments Research before transitioning to drug development as medical director at Hovione, where he spent five years in the fields of dermatology, ophthalmology and inhalation. He joined Lexitas as CEO in 2021. He has led Lexitas from 45 employees to 140 and tripled the number of trials Lexitas is running at any time. He is certified by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) and serves as either an advisor or director to several companies.
Dr Magrath lives with his wife and four children in Charleston.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you please tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I knew from an early age I wanted to help people through drug development. It’s why I studied biochemistry as an undergraduate, though unfortunately I wasn’t a very good chemist! I subsequently went to medical school, the Medical University of South Carolina, which set me on my path.
After medical school I completed an ophthalmology residency, treating eye diseases. But in this part of the US it wasn’t possible to treat eye cancers, and it came with stark consequences. Children had to be referred to specialists 650 miles away in Philadelphia. With treatment often a three-year process, it was an arduous ask for any family. One mother found it so overwhelming that she flew straight back home with her child after landing at the airport in Philadelphia. With no treatment available in South Carolina, I was part of a surgical team which had to remove the child’s eye.
That stuck with me, and was why I moved to Philadelphia for two years to learn the treatment from experts at the Wills Eye Hospital. I was then able to bring this treatment back to South Carolina in 2016. In the meantime, I had also studied for an MBA, as well as an applied economics degree, and this combination of medical and business nous forms the basis of my work as CEO at Lexitas.
Can you please share with us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
In ophthalmology we’re blessed with the opportunity to do surgery in the developing world to help with one of the world’s leading causes of blindness, cataracts. The surgery can be completed quickly, safely, and with minimal equipment, making it suitable for the developing world. I was fortunate to be invited to travel with the US Army to Panama to perform these surgeries for a few weeks.
I’ve been on several of these trips, but this one was special because of the size of the organization and the number of surgeries we were able to complete. It was an amazing thing to be involved with.
Which principles or philosophies have guided your life? Your career?
I remember forming my core philosophy when I was 10 years old while watching Jimmy Valvano’s acceptance speech for the Arthur Ashe Award on ESPN. His quote cuts to the core of how I try to live my life.
“To me, there are three things we all should do every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. Number three is you should have your emotions moved to tears — whether that’s happiness or joy. Think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.”
In my roles leading Lexitas, as a surgeon, and as a father and husband, I try to laugh, think, and have my emotions moved every day. It’s an amazing way to live life and makes it a lot of fun!
In my career I’ve always focused on people. That’s what it’s all about: how can we help the people in our lives? Whether patients or co-workers, I try to do something to help every day. This gives me the most satisfaction in my work and I’ve found that it pays off in ways you could never imagine.
Ok thank you for that. Let’s now move to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell us about your “Big Idea That Might Change The World”?
Similar to the “tech-for-good” movement, we need a “pharma-for-good” movement.
In the US the allocation of resources for drug development doesn’t always go to the most needed or most promising drugs. The private sector is incentivized towards drugs with a reasonable market size and reimbursement schedule, sometimes leaving important programs on the sidelines.
Nonprofits, the National Institute of Health, and other government agencies try to fill this gap but don’t have the scale or capabilities to fully develop drugs. The system needs venture capitalists to fund this because it simply doesn’t happen with philanthropic-only funding, and the country needs our healthcare system to reward medicines which make a positive and dramatic impact on people’s lives.
Better aligning the private sector and the healthcare system to direct more funds towards transformative programs would have amazing benefits. We’re starting to see this in some therapeutic areas, but we need more.
Pharma-for-good is so under-developed in the US. We need more venture capital firms with a profit focus, while at the same time having an overall mission towards something bigger. Being interested not just in the bottom line, but all stakeholders in society who could benefit from the drug.
How do you think this will change the world?
Adapting the “tech-for-good” philosophy to develop “pharma-for-good” would increase collaboration, innovation, and change the paradigm of treatment for so many diseases. It’s incredibly hard to develop transformative medicines, so we all need to get behind big ideas and help progress them forward. By working together — as scientists, physicians, funders and payers — we can make sure that the best ideas have the best support.
Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this idea that people should think more deeply about?
We obviously live in a world of finite resources, meaning there are only so many dollars and drug developers to go around. Every time we select a project to develop, others are shelved. Changing the incentives and the patterns of drug development will alter which drugs are developed, and we as a society need to decide how much resources and where to apply them to get the maximal utility.
Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this idea? Can you tell us that story?
I have personal experience of the limitations of philanthropic funding. Five years ago, I received a grant from the Duke Endowment for specialist cameras to carry out proactive eye exams for diabetics in rural areas who can’t afford, or don’t have access to, eye care. The point was to identify problems early and prevent future blindness: a major problem in vulnerable populations is diabetes, which is a leading cause of blindness.
It’s been a brilliant project and we’ve read 10,000 images. But five years on it’s a question of: “How do we do it now?” People are no longer being compensated to do it so there cannot be the same level of vigor. When they are doing it voluntarily, it’s naturally a different level of commitment.
This is representative of so many philanthropic projects in healthcare and pharma. There is an early energy and amazing data generated. They get their early work done but then it comes to the first big clinical trial and they need $30m to run it. The funding has run out and the funding community doesn’t see the market yet, so the drug doesn’t progress any further. It’s really sad: a potentially vital treatment gets to the 20-yard line but can’t score the goal.
To be clear, this is not a complaint about the grant, more an example of where a pharma-for-good movement could make a difference: identifying an area of medicine where there could be a return on investment, while at the same time driving health benefits — and cost savings — to society in preventing people getting sick.
What do you need to lead this idea to widespread adoption?
This idea needs authentic buy-in and collaboration from all stakeholders, it’s really a complex problem that needs to be attacked from several different angles. I think each stakeholder group really genuinely wants this concept to be successful, it’s a matter of working together to make it happen.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why.
- Nobody ever makes it alone. Every aspect of our life is touched by the people in our lives. I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by wonderful people who have mentored, advised and helped me at every step along the way. Relationships are so important.
- Whenever you give, you’ll receive it back in spades. I’m always amazed and inspired by the joy and thankfulness that I receive from my patients, when they’re in tough circumstances and don’t owe me a thing. I’ve found throughout my life that the more I put in, the more that comes back, and most of the time is unexpected.
- Doing things right is hard. To create something special is hard work. It takes close to a decade to become a surgeon, years of hard work to develop a drug, and many failures along the way for both.
- It’s important to laugh. We all have serious and stressful lives, it’s critical for this to be cut by levity and laughter. I’ve been incredibly privileged to see the power of laughter even in horrible situations, like blindness. Life really is about helping people and having a good time while you’re doing it, so I try not to ever take myself too seriously.
- Don’t ever give up. I’ve been blessed to get into great schools and get some great jobs, but I’ve been denied and declined so many more times. It has to be literally hundreds of applications or proposals that I’ve poured my heart into that have been declined. Most of which were done so in unceremonious ways that leave you feeling down and inadequate. It’s amazing though, as all of these have led to even better opportunities and I’m convinced that perseverance has led me to a place where I’m most effective, fulfilled and happy.
Can you share with our readers what you think are the most important “success habits” or “success mindsets”?
I’m not sure I have any special habits, but I would say that a servant leadership mindset has worked very well. I try to approach every problem in a collaborative manner and actively look for ways that I can help elevate the people around me.
Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
It’s simple, I’d ask them to look at the amazing success that tech-for-good has had and think critically about how amazing it would be if we could replicate that in pharma. It’s going to take a wide collaboration of talented people to replicate tech-for-good, but it starts with each individual VC looking at projects with a lens of both profit and utility for patients.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
They can follow me on LinkedIn.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
Pharma-For-Good: Dr George Magrath’s Big Idea That Might Change The World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
