Moving research from concept to market is like conducting a symphony - there are numerous players and stakeholders, each bringing their unique expertise to work in harmony and advance a project. As research continues to speed up and span across disciplines, the challenge of bringing new ideas and innovations from the academic sphere to the commercial realm becomes increasingly crucial.

HairDAO, a BioDAO that is currently a part of the bio.xyz accelerator, had their first IP-NFT transaction. For $75k, HairDAO will gain access to the initial data from Dr. Ralf Paus’ lab Cutaneon. Then, based on the results, HairDAO may opt to test combinations of T3/T4 thyroid hormone at different dosages for an additional $50k.

In 2021, our team at Molecule published the first implementation of intellectual property NFTs (IP-NFTs). A solution that wraps intellectual property rights such as patents, datasets, or contractual agreements inside a non-fungible token, enabling easy transfer and collective ownership over such assets. Together with VitaDAO, we managed to demonstrate that this new asset class can be a viable investment instrument for biotech research.

Since 2018, Molecule has been at the forefront of decentralized science (DeSci). By helping to build the first biotech DAO - VitaDAO - and by creating core DeSci infrastructure like the IP-NFT framework we have laid the foundation for the next generation of builders in DeSci to emerge and reshape the life sciences. Through this process, Molecule and the DeSci community have learned a tremendous amount about building at the intersection of web3 and bio.

We are pleased to announce that Molecule’s IP-NFT funding framework will facilitate critical preclinical work in Dr. Amit Sharma’s laboratory at the SRF Research Center to eliminate the accumulation of senescent cells in age-related diseases.

Paul Kohlhaas visited the Podcast of Andrew Steinwald, and spoke about his path into the pharmaceutical space and web3. He shares his experiences in biohacking, the pharma industry, the drug development process and how web3 could play a crucial role in making drug development more efficient, fair and transparent. This is achieved through BioDAOs an open source approach of pharmaceutical early stage research and leveraging the traits of NFTs through and a new standard, the IP-NFT. Molecule is a company that is virtualizing and decentralizing how drug development works. They do this by attaching data and IP rights to non-fungible tokens (NFT's) and then bringing the core IP into web3. This makes the intellectual property liquid, which is very hard to achieve in biotech today, and also enables price discovery around IP. Molecule has created a curation market where people can trade and discover therapeutics for drugs. Molecule has also started building biotech DAOs, which are research collectives that are comprised of patients, investors, and researchers in a specific therapeutic area. The mission is to democratize access to medicine by empowering researchers and patients to become co-owners of the IP and data associated with a new therapeutic. Paul describes how the company's IP-NFTs work to store data associated with a new therapeutic and how they can be used to fractionalize ownership of the IP. He also walks through the company's roadmap and explains how they plan to decentralize ownership of the data and IP associated with a new therapeutic. Paul discusses the origins of VitaDAO and IP-NFT, the process of setting up a DAO, and the long-term vision for a DAO-based ecosystem for pharmaceutical research and development.The grand vision for the projects is to develop a drug that is enabled and discovered through the process and reaches patients in a eight to ten year timeframe. He also discusses the potential for IP-NFTs to be used to fractionalize the ownership of IP and allow patients to contribute funding to research."

A blossoming Decentralized Science (DeSci) movement is changing the biopharma landscape by enabling the formation of patient- and researcher-centric communities building with an open-source ethos.

TL;DR: This week, the first university biomedical intellectual property (IP) and research project was funded as an NFT (non-fungible token), enabled by a pioneering innovation at Molecule. The IP-NFT enables new fundraising and collaboration strategies for researchers by combining legal and technical frameworks with NFT technology. Early-stage research can be financed without endless grant applications, creating a startup and raising VC or needing to file a patent.

Throughout the past 2 weeks VitaDAO Token Holders got to vote on the proposal “VDP-5 Scheibye-Knudsen Lab Funding” to fund longevity at the Scheibye-Knudsen Lab in Copenhagen. The voting passed with 2.1M token votes and 88% of votes supporting the proposition. With the proposal having been approved by the DAO members, the lab in Copenhagen will receive $250.000 for the first research phase of the project over a period of 12 months. After successful completion and review of Phase 1 by the DAO, another $250.000 for an additional 12 months of research could be handed out to the lab. As part of this deal, VitaDAO will fully own the intellectual property (IP) resulting from the research project. The first biopharma IP that will be owned and managed by a DAO. Ownership and access management to the IP will be handled via Molecule’s novel IPNFT framework. The infrastructure is utilizing Ethereum ERC721, Arweave and Nevermined.