Fascinating. I had no idea. My background is in biotech (sales and marketing side) and you’re right, that path to Phase 1 clinical trials is loaded with landmines, roadblocks, and obstacles that prevents countless projects from ever getting off the ground. Number of compounds out there with potential are countless but the way the system is set up now, risk is avoided in exchange for projects that are considered more likely to succeed but not necessarily a significant advancement in science. How many patients will never get treatment from a game-changing drug because the funding for it was never there to bring it to fruition. Instead, the safe bet for VC and pharma is to just tweak an existing proven compound, file with regulatory, and extend a patent on a drug that doesn’t really move the needle vs what could have been with an entirely different class.
Indeed! But I would not sell the current system too short - lots of innovative science attracting investment from VCs & yes even pharma! Where the current systems lacks is in financing early projects that may not necessarily be “plugged in” to highly credentialed networks. (i.e., science not coming from top tier labs or having a personal connection to VCs). Let’s see MAYBE DeSci fixes this....
I’ll be following along intently. This scratches an intellectual itch of mine. Thanks for the introduction and laying out what the present environment looks like. Super helpful.
Exactly! One thing we have noticed recently is that patient advocacy groups for rare disorders have began to favor funding actual drug R&D over basic research. This enables donors to see a tangible use of their donation, enables hope for patients, and helps with clinical trial recruitment which can be challenging for ultra rare disease.
One could easily see the next step being DAOs being spun up around specific diseases with patients taking funding raising and operations into their own hands!
1) Peer review is a pain in the ass from a reviewer perspective. To do it right, I need to spend a solid 8hrs on a manuscript to dig through the details, understand the nuances of the experimental setup and the analytical tools used. There is no compensation for this, and importantly, nobody has time to do this. I suspect most articles probably get 1-2hrs tops per reviewer, so much shit gets published. You really need dedicated reviewers, but then, they need to know the intricacies of that topic so...
2) 100% finding the right people to join a DAO is going to be hard. To get someone who understands design to value, ie the full circle of product fit, legal, biological relevancy, and manufacturing is hard. e.g. an unamed top 3 medtech company in US invented automatic suturing device, full FDA approval, saved time, shilled by all the KOLs at conferences, but no surgeon bought it cuz turns out, surgeons love to sow shit up at the end lol.
3) Pharma has set up innovation centers around the globe to incubate startups, seems to save them money on internal R&D. Would be interesting to see a DAO get integrated into those networks to help fund the more risky early ventures with interested companies already at the table.
1. I believe the idea with open science DAOs is to offer incentive for reviewers to be properly compensated via token for their time. Also there is talk of some of the publication DAOs offering bounties for independent labs to try to reproduce the published data - very cool!
2. You would be surprised the quality of ppl in DAOs. Next week I believe we will write up VitaDAO. A mixture of PhD, MDs, MBAs, JDs, coming from academia, venture capital, and industry
3. Stay tuned - by end of 2022 based on what I am hearing you will see some announcements
Very interesting. Do you think it’s possible/useful for DAO SPVs and the R&D activities they enable (for those facing the back end of the drug discovery process) to be domiciled in emerging jurisdictions that provide freedom in regard to medical and legal entity regulations?
From a scientific perspective it does not make a difference. The amount of capital that can be attracted via DAO financing at this time is only capable of funding very early R&D. Traditional venture capital & public financing will still be needed to convert these projects to FDA approved products so the IP will have to move out of the DAO at some point.
From a business and crypto regulatory perceptive it can matter. See the video in the substack to hear the lawyers discuss. The best places to put the SPV seem to be Switzerland, UK, Marshall Islands - but can also be in the USA (Wyoming) - depends on risk tolerance and the goals of the DAO - NOT LEGAL ADVICE!
This is all great, but when it comes time to pay people, pay for lab time, pay for trials, dollars are needed $$$. Will these DAOs deal in dollars or in some new token? Same issue that I see with much of crypto. You can't buy food or property or lab equipment with XYZ coin.
Business relationships conducted in fiat. Many DAOs hold a mixture of ETH & USDC in treasury. But when it comes time to fund a real world project (eg - an academic project) the USDC must be transferred to a legal entity (eg LLC or C-corp) and converted to local currency.
That's interesting then. Thanks for the article. Another important point in the IP process is ownership. If it is funded by a DAO, the incentive still needs to be present for the leading scientist to retain full ownership of the IP and not the DAO.
I think any investor would want ownership of IP - otherwise what are they investing in? I would go so far as to flip that statement and say inventors should be prepared to give up controlling interest in their IP.
Check out IP NFT as an emerging alternative that potentially enables fractional ownership of ip
I like the idea of IP-NFTs. Do you think it needs to be decentralized though? Using blockchain to trade the asset, fractionalize, transfer ownership is all very useful, but ultimately if a hacker steals your "IP-NFT" that can't be allowed. Maybe it needs to be on a permissioned/centralized blockchain.
To be honest I am not sure how that works. The physical patent certainly still exists so maybe ways to prevent the lost keys issues...check out Molecule.io they pioneered this & word is just raised a solid traditional VC round....
Asking for a friend. Manager (sales) at tech company $350k been offered a Engagement manager equivalent at MBB for $350k (possibly $420 with year end bonus) with the carrot of associate partner within 2yrs. Already have wifi biz 200k/yr profits setup. Stick with tech or go MBB?
Thanks bowtied bull for all the information, definitely life changing stuff. I haven’t figured out how to carve my niche into Wi-Fi money but I’ve turned the wfh hustle to the max.
Fascinating. I had no idea. My background is in biotech (sales and marketing side) and you’re right, that path to Phase 1 clinical trials is loaded with landmines, roadblocks, and obstacles that prevents countless projects from ever getting off the ground. Number of compounds out there with potential are countless but the way the system is set up now, risk is avoided in exchange for projects that are considered more likely to succeed but not necessarily a significant advancement in science. How many patients will never get treatment from a game-changing drug because the funding for it was never there to bring it to fruition. Instead, the safe bet for VC and pharma is to just tweak an existing proven compound, file with regulatory, and extend a patent on a drug that doesn’t really move the needle vs what could have been with an entirely different class.
Indeed! But I would not sell the current system too short - lots of innovative science attracting investment from VCs & yes even pharma! Where the current systems lacks is in financing early projects that may not necessarily be “plugged in” to highly credentialed networks. (i.e., science not coming from top tier labs or having a personal connection to VCs). Let’s see MAYBE DeSci fixes this....
I’ll be following along intently. This scratches an intellectual itch of mine. Thanks for the introduction and laying out what the present environment looks like. Super helpful.
This is pretty amazing. Future app I can think of.
Having a rare genetic disorder. However, outcomes are minor and only 1-2M people have it worldwide. So no funding, few specialists, and no cure.
This would allow you to create an "Disorder" Dao. And get funding together from thousands in same situation.
Exactly! One thing we have noticed recently is that patient advocacy groups for rare disorders have began to favor funding actual drug R&D over basic research. This enables donors to see a tangible use of their donation, enables hope for patients, and helps with clinical trial recruitment which can be challenging for ultra rare disease.
One could easily see the next step being DAOs being spun up around specific diseases with patients taking funding raising and operations into their own hands!
Thanks for the writeup.
1) Peer review is a pain in the ass from a reviewer perspective. To do it right, I need to spend a solid 8hrs on a manuscript to dig through the details, understand the nuances of the experimental setup and the analytical tools used. There is no compensation for this, and importantly, nobody has time to do this. I suspect most articles probably get 1-2hrs tops per reviewer, so much shit gets published. You really need dedicated reviewers, but then, they need to know the intricacies of that topic so...
2) 100% finding the right people to join a DAO is going to be hard. To get someone who understands design to value, ie the full circle of product fit, legal, biological relevancy, and manufacturing is hard. e.g. an unamed top 3 medtech company in US invented automatic suturing device, full FDA approval, saved time, shilled by all the KOLs at conferences, but no surgeon bought it cuz turns out, surgeons love to sow shit up at the end lol.
3) Pharma has set up innovation centers around the globe to incubate startups, seems to save them money on internal R&D. Would be interesting to see a DAO get integrated into those networks to help fund the more risky early ventures with interested companies already at the table.
Excited to see how this turns out.
1. I believe the idea with open science DAOs is to offer incentive for reviewers to be properly compensated via token for their time. Also there is talk of some of the publication DAOs offering bounties for independent labs to try to reproduce the published data - very cool!
2. You would be surprised the quality of ppl in DAOs. Next week I believe we will write up VitaDAO. A mixture of PhD, MDs, MBAs, JDs, coming from academia, venture capital, and industry
3. Stay tuned - by end of 2022 based on what I am hearing you will see some announcements
Very interesting. Do you think it’s possible/useful for DAO SPVs and the R&D activities they enable (for those facing the back end of the drug discovery process) to be domiciled in emerging jurisdictions that provide freedom in regard to medical and legal entity regulations?
From a scientific perspective it does not make a difference. The amount of capital that can be attracted via DAO financing at this time is only capable of funding very early R&D. Traditional venture capital & public financing will still be needed to convert these projects to FDA approved products so the IP will have to move out of the DAO at some point.
From a business and crypto regulatory perceptive it can matter. See the video in the substack to hear the lawyers discuss. The best places to put the SPV seem to be Switzerland, UK, Marshall Islands - but can also be in the USA (Wyoming) - depends on risk tolerance and the goals of the DAO - NOT LEGAL ADVICE!
This is all great, but when it comes time to pay people, pay for lab time, pay for trials, dollars are needed $$$. Will these DAOs deal in dollars or in some new token? Same issue that I see with much of crypto. You can't buy food or property or lab equipment with XYZ coin.
Business relationships conducted in fiat. Many DAOs hold a mixture of ETH & USDC in treasury. But when it comes time to fund a real world project (eg - an academic project) the USDC must be transferred to a legal entity (eg LLC or C-corp) and converted to local currency.
That's interesting then. Thanks for the article. Another important point in the IP process is ownership. If it is funded by a DAO, the incentive still needs to be present for the leading scientist to retain full ownership of the IP and not the DAO.
I think any investor would want ownership of IP - otherwise what are they investing in? I would go so far as to flip that statement and say inventors should be prepared to give up controlling interest in their IP.
Check out IP NFT as an emerging alternative that potentially enables fractional ownership of ip
https://medium.com/molecule-blog/molecules-biopharma-ipnfts-a-technical-description-4dcfc6bf77f8
I like the idea of IP-NFTs. Do you think it needs to be decentralized though? Using blockchain to trade the asset, fractionalize, transfer ownership is all very useful, but ultimately if a hacker steals your "IP-NFT" that can't be allowed. Maybe it needs to be on a permissioned/centralized blockchain.
To be honest I am not sure how that works. The physical patent certainly still exists so maybe ways to prevent the lost keys issues...check out Molecule.io they pioneered this & word is just raised a solid traditional VC round....
Super interesting! Do you think this has legs to bleed over into dx/tools space? I know you mentioned genomics as something already in motion
Certainly! Would be surprised if someone is not thinking about that already. But I have not heard anything specific.
Asking for a friend. Manager (sales) at tech company $350k been offered a Engagement manager equivalent at MBB for $350k (possibly $420 with year end bonus) with the carrot of associate partner within 2yrs. Already have wifi biz 200k/yr profits setup. Stick with tech or go MBB?
Thanks bowtied bull for all the information, definitely life changing stuff. I haven’t figured out how to carve my niche into Wi-Fi money but I’ve turned the wfh hustle to the max.