$35 million from the Ajmera family creates transplant institute, bringing the family’s giving to over $62 Million
Sam Ajmera left India for Canada at 26.
He wanted to build a better life for his family.
Decades later, that family has made one of the largest commitments to transplant medicine anywhere in the world.
Sam, his wife Shaila, and their sons Ojus and Tejus, the family behind FGF Brands, have given $35 million to UHN through the UHN Foundation to create the Ajmera Transplant Institute in Toronto.
The gift raises the family’s total giving to UHN to $62 million.
That is the largest known single-family gift to transplant care in Canada, and UHN describes it as the largest known single-family philanthropic support for transplant medicine globally.
“When I came to Canada at 26 years old, I did it to build a better life for my family,” Sam Ajmera said. “Canada gave us the opportunity to do that, and I am deeply grateful for it.
It is immensely meaningful to support an institution as extraordinary as UHN. My hope is that the Ajmera Transplant Institute will turn the discoveries of today into the treatments that save lives tomorrow, improving the lives of patients and families for generations to come.”
For the Ajmeras, the gift is personal.
“The family was affected and touched by transplants,” said Julie Quenneville, CEO of UHN Foundation.
“They have been patients at UHN, and they wanted, as a family, to do something that was going to be truly transformative.”
Sam has been on the UHN Foundation board for about a decade. Over that time the family’s name has become part of the hospital itself.
The transplant program at Toronto General Hospital, once called the Multi-Organ Transplant Program, became the Soham and Shaila Ajmera Family Transplant Center and is now known as the Ajmera Transplant Center.
It is Canada’s largest and most comprehensive transplant program.
The family also created the Soham and Shaila Ajmera Family Chair in Molecular Diabetes Research at UHN.
The new institute goes further. It will bring the full range of transplant work under one roof: patient care across every organ UHN transplant, research, innovation, and the training of the next generation of specialists.
“The institute will be all things transplant,” said Dr. Deepali Kumar, program medical director of the Ajmera Transplant Center.
“It will include research. It will include education. We will be able to recruit the best and brightest people from around the planet.”
She said the institute will invest in artificial intelligence and ex vivo technologies that keep and repair organs outside the body before transplant.
It will also focus on diabetes through pancreas and islet transplantation, therapies that can restore the body’s ability to make insulin.
The need is urgent.
As chronic disease rises, more patients reach end-stage organ failure, and there are not enough organs to go around.
Every year more than 250 Canadians die waiting for one. Many others who do receive a transplant then face rejection, complications and a lifetime of anti-rejection medication.
UHN says solving these problems requires a new kind of teamwork, bringing together clinicians, engineers, immunologists, regenerative medicine specialists, cell therapy researchers, and data scientists. The institute is designed to make that teamwork possible.
“The gift marks a defining moment for UHN and for the future of transplantation,” Dr. Kumar said.
“With it, we will have the opportunity to reimagine what is possible for those facing organ failure, reduce wait times, improve outcomes, and advance the next generation of transplant therapies.
The Ajmera family’s generosity will have a lasting impact on patients here in Canada and around the world.”
The institute has a strong track record. UHN created ex vivo organ perfusion.
It performed Canada’s first heart transplant after donation following circulatory death and opened the world’s first Centre for Living Organ Donation.
It has completed a rare five-organ transplant.
It was the first in North America to use living-donor liver transplants to treat people with liver metastases that were otherwise incurable.
In an international clinical trial, its teams transplanted lab-grown insulin-producing cells that let people with Type 1 diabetes stop insulin injections at their one-year follow-up.
In its most recent year, UHN performed a record 820 transplants, including more lung transplants than any other hospital in the world. It is now working toward 1,000 transplants a year.
“Transplant medicine is one of the greatest achievements in modern health care, and UHN has long been at the forefront of that progress,” said Dr. Kevin Smith, president and CEO of UHN.
“The Ajmera family’s visionary investment will enable us to accelerate discovery, deepen interdisciplinary collaboration, and redefine what is possible in transplantation.”
The family’s giving rests on a business it built from scratch. Sam provided the seed money, guidance, and experience when Ojus and Tejus founded FGF in 2004.
They started with six employees, two small ovens, and one mixer in a 5,500-square-foot bakery and a goal of becoming “the World’s Greatest Baker.” FGF is now Canada’s largest industrial baker.
It employs more than 10,000 people at 35 facilities across Canada and the United States and includes brands such as Stonefire, ACE, Wonder, Country Harvest, and D’Italiano.
This year Sam, Ojus and Tejus were inducted into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame. The family’s giving also reaches beyond UHN. The family established the Ajmera Family Chair in Urology at Sunnybrook Hospital to support genetic research in prostate cancer, and Sam has long supported BAPS Charities’ humanitarian work.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford attended the announcement to thank the family, along with UHN surgeons, physicians, clinicians, and leaders from the philanthropic and business communities.
The gift also opens a wider $100 million UHN Foundation campaign for transplant medicine.
“The Ajmera family’s legacy is one of hard work, dedication, and an unwavering belief in the power of philanthropy,” Quenneville said.
“It is an incredible example of what happens when a family uses their generosity to empower transformative change.”