A unique way to give back

As the founder of an innovative software company, Serge Bays lives by a demanding schedule. His days are filled with meetings and decisions, invention and inspiration. Once or twice a week, he stops by St. Joseph’s Hospital after doing his business. The other kind of business.

Bays contributes to innovative medical research through the fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) program of Lawson Research Institute at St. Joseph Health Care London (St. Joseph’s). But just how and what he contributes is unusual: he’s a poop donor. 

Aimed at restoring a recipient's healthy gut bacteria, FMT is an exciting area of research and treatment for cancer and other diseases. A healthy gut is vital to the human immune system – the body’s main protective and disease-fighting tool – and many other aspects of health.

FMT involves taking stool – or poop – from carefully screened healthy donors, processing it in the lab, and creating tasteless, odourless capsules for patients. The results have been revolutionary in the treatment of C. difficile, a debilitating bowel infection that now has a 96 per cent cure rate thanks to the capsules. FMT is also proving promising in boosting the body’s immune response to tumours, explains Lawson scientist Dr. Michael Silverman, an infectious disease specialist who pioneered the capsules.

Known as LND101, the capsules are produced at St. Joseph’s for treatment and leading-edge research that is attracting attention worldwide, but it can’t happen without people like Bays.

The 35-year-old takes pride in repurposing his waste for science.

"When you're talking about poop, of course it sounds gross,” Bays admits, “but it's much more than that. I'm thinking about the results.”

A relentless pursuit of results has driven Bays to success in his career. In 2009, he founded Limesoft Inc., a company that develops emissions tracking software for Fortune 500 companies. Bays was recently recognized in London Inc. Magazine’s prestigious 20 Under 40 program, which spotlights the best and brightest changemakers in London. As someone whose professional work operates on a global scale, St. Joseph’s FMT program is an opportunity for Bays to contribute to a cause closer to home.

“The more success you have, the more important it is to give back to the community in your area. A lot of people dream of big, grandiose changes, but if everybody could just chip in a little bit every day in their community, I think that goes a long way,” he says.

When Bays first heard about St. Joseph’s FMT program, he was fascinated. Bays had noticed the wide-reaching impact of diet choices on his own health and the gut microbiome interested him. It was a chance he couldn’t pass up – or flush away: not only to watch research lift the curtain on this complex relationship, but to be a part of the discovery.

“Dr. Silverman's research is so promising, and there's just more and more data coming out to support the link between gut microbiome and its effects on health. And that's something people intuitively maybe knew for centuries, but now we actually have clinical research and data to back it up,” Bays says.

Dr. Silverman, Medical Director of St. Joseph’s Infectious Diseases Care Program, was one of the first in North America to perform fecal transplants over 20 years ago and has been breaking new ground ever since. Most recently, his team, in collaboration with London Health Sciences Centre Research Institute, made headlines for a world-first study that will explore the effectiveness of the LND101 pills in improving the response of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer to chemotherapy.

Since his first poop donation six years ago, Bays has become a passionate advocate for the program. He wants to use his platform to spread the word and talk openly about poop donation. Knowing that donors are in short supply, Bays donates more frequently these days and urges others to reach out to St. Joseph’s about the screening process.

“I think there's no downside other than the time invested. If a donation can help cure somebody or save someone's life or even just helps a person feel better, I think it's really worth it,” Bays says.

He also brings up another benefit: what’s good for others can also be good for you. FMT donors must be carefully screened and lead a healthy lifestyle for their microbiome to be suitable for passing on. Bays says this keeps him accountable when it comes to eating well and sticking to a healthy lifestyle.

“If I'm letting my lifestyle slip, I also think about how that might negatively affect my own microbiome. And it's not just me now, there's other people that depend on me. So that brings me more awareness, it keeps me healthy.”