BIO Cohort 2: Request for Biotech DAOs

One of the core functions of BIO is to incubate and accelerate onchain scientific communities known as bioDAOs. At the protocol level, this means curation, funding, liquidity and onchain incentives. But beyond the code, incubation is very much a real-world endeavor, with BIO’s core team and network supporting Y-Combinator-style incubation and equipping scientists, patients and biotech builders with everything they need to build a successful DAO, from legal support and tokenomics, to community-building and talent.    

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BIO's team helped pioneer the first bioDAO, VitaDAO, and since then has incubated CerebrumDAO, HairDAO, ValleyDAO, PsyDAO, AthenaDAO, and CryoDAO. These bioDAOs have taken significant strides developing and commercializing groundbreaking scientific research. We remain committed to accelerating our network of bioDAOs – which is the vision of BIO.

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‍Building on this success, we are excited to announce that BIO is now opening applications for our upcoming second cohort, which is planned to launch in Q4 2024. BioDAO applications will be initially filtered by Program Operators and ultimately presented to BIO token holders, who stake on the bioDAOs they want accepted into the BIO Incubation Program.

• Click here to apply for cohort 2.
• Click here to apply to become a mentor.
• Join our Discord to talk to us!

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Read on to discover the world of bioDAOs, potential areas for future bioDAOs, and how BIO can help you be part of this transformative movement.

What are BioDAOs?

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BioDAOs are community-owned scientific research networks. They typically focus on a specific scientific or medical area and use the power of a globally distributed collective of stakeholders (e.g., patients, scientists and biotech builders) to accelerate the R&D process and develop new IP. BioDAOs uniquely empower their participants. Members pool together resources (data, capital, labor) for the mutually-held mission of the DAO. By sharing resources, these communities reduce the cost of innovation and time to commercialization.

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Successful bioDAOs often emerge from strong online communities, typically focused on underserved research areas. BioDAOs can uniquely tap a long-tail of contributors in their networks, whereas traditional organizations often rely on full-time hiring. DAOs enable a flexible work model, enabling people with full-time jobs -- like world-leading professors, postdocs, researchers -- to help source, diligence, finance and operate biotech assets in their free time as part of the DAO. Part of their incentive for contributing is shared ownership of the DAO’s IP. This opportunity is something missing from traditional biotech, which often revolves around closed scientific funding and incentive models.

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As a collective, bioDAOs develop scientific IP, much like a Focused Research Organization (FRO) or research institution. BioDAOs can uniquely monetize this IP by minting IP-NFTs and IPTs, spinning out companies, and licensing IP to traditional biotech businesses. These proceeds then flow back to bioDAO treasuries to fund and translate the next generation of R&D, further advancing the bioDAO’s mission.

The Success of the First Wave of BioDAOs

The first wave of bioDAOs has made measurable progress within their respective fields. For example:

• VitaDAO, focused on longevity science and research, has grown into one of the largest onchain scientific communities to date, having received backing from Pfizer Ventures, building successful projects with renowned university research labs (VITA-FAST and VitaRNA), backing world-class biotech teams, and receiving recognition from leading scientific journals like Nature.   
• Cerebrum DAO is advancing brain health to prevent neurodegeneration with a focus on tackling Alzheimer's first. They’ve struck a deal with Fission Pharma to tackle chronic inflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction in neurodegenerative disease. They’ve raised over $1.5M for the space from the community and VCs like BoostVC. 
• HairDAO, targeting the pervasive issue of hair loss, has funded pioneering research by minting their first IP-NFT for Professor Ralf Paus's work and launching a Patient Portal for decentralized observational studies. They are the first DAO to file for a medical patent and to produce, sell, and distribute a direct-to-consumer product - FoliCool.
• AthenaDAO is the leading decentralized organization advancing women’s health R&D. They have reviewed over 250 projects from institutions like Cambridge and Harvard, funded 500k in translational research, pre-prints, and fellowships, and have 14 IP deals pending. With 11k members globally, one summit, more than 50 events hosted, and 3 public goods published, they now are a global name in women’s health.
• ValleyDAO, focusing on climate biotech, is currently working with Imperial College London and Denmark’s Technical University. Over the past year, they've raised $2m in follow-on funding for their spinouts and helped them secure initial customers. In addition, they’ve launched Phlo, an online platform connecting climate biotech researchers, projects, and stakeholders in the ecosystem.
• CryoDAO, is advancing the often overlooked field of cryogenics. They’ve already established first projects with Dr. João Pedro de Magalhães and Aschwin de Wolf. They have a scientific advisory board of 5 top scientists and raised over $3M for the field.
• PsyDAO, delving into the potential of psychedelic medicines, has launched the Alchemist Grants supporting research in the psychedelic space, is gearing up to launch OPSY, a new platform leveraging psychedelics trials and data, and have entered into an LOI with one of the biggest names in the psychedelic field.

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Our hypothesis is that the best bioDAOs will not be our ideas, but arise organically from passionate communities with real skin in the game. We are excited to empower them and support their growth! Below are examples of bioDAO areas we believe have promise. We encourage you to apply even if you are working on a DAO or concept outside of what is mentioned.

Potential areas for BioDAOs

ADHD & Nootropics

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common medical diagnoses among children and young adults, affecting at least 13% of 12-17 year olds. Treatment for these patients is almost exclusively with amphetamines. In 2020, there were over 6 million children in the US taking one of the following ADHD treatments: amphetamine salts (Adderall), methylphenidate (Ritalin), lisdexamfetamine (Vyvanse), atomoxetine (Strattera), or methamphetamine (Desoxyn). Though all of these drugs are FDA approved, their long-term safety is not well understood, and some evidence shows they may contribute to high blood pressure and other poor cardiovascular biomarkers. We think that natural products and supplements can serve as potent cognitive stimulants (nootropics), especially when combined into combinations, known colloquially in the nootropics community as “stacks”. 

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‍The subreddit page r/Nootropics is over 330,000 members strong, each sharing their personal experiences experimenting with various compounds. Structuring this data and discovering correlations of preferences between individuals based on their cognitive phenotype and personality type is an underserved area of research. The global nootropics market is currently ~10B USD.  A DAO focused on optimizing human productivity via experimenting with nootropics would require a consumer-facing application, similar to Beli, repurposed for nootropics. A decentralized community would need only a centralized location for pre-packaging and branding approved nootropics in a mechanism that preserves the privacy of the IP of each stack developer, and a mechanism for rating subjective productivity enhancement with each stack. A full vision document is here. 

Sleep

Insomnia is experienced by a significant fraction of the population, with most estimates around 33%, disproportionately affecting older adults. Insomniacs have more psychological and health complications relative to non-insomniacs, and cost the healthcare system 60% more. The sleep aid market is ~64B USD and should grow significantly with the aging population [ref]. Many individuals self-experiment with benzos, melatonin receptor agonists, antidepressants, and THC gummies, but each has its drawbacks.

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In addition to the arsenal of sleep medications and non-pharmaceutical interventions that can be experimented with, sleep tracking has become more accurate and accessible to the greater population. With consumer products like the Whoop Band, Apple Watch, Garmin watches, Oura Ring, and many others, precise sleep quantification and stage tracking is highly democratized. What is missing is a system to associate sleep data and give actionable insights to individuals and across individuals to determine which interventions they are experimenting with are improving sleep duration and quality. For insomniacs, the experimental phase is often lengthy, expensive, incessant, and suboptimal to having an a priori prediction of which interventions are likely to work for a given individual given their sleep patterns and genetics.

Nutrition and Obesity

You are what you eat, and after millennia of human inquiry into optimal consumption, we still don’t have answers. The obesity epidemic is expensive in both human life and cost to the medical system, affecting over 40% of the US population and costs the US healthcare system ~173 billion USD. As quick as we are to blame individuals for their behavior, blame can be shared with the scientific and medical institutions. Millions of dollars in spending into the Food Compass scores that claim Lucky Charms and M&Ms are healthier than ground beef. Clearly, nutritional recommendations from government-funded research has become entangled with political agendas, and the result is an overfed population that is underfed of the truth about nutrition. 

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While time-restricted feeding and intermittent fasting has been purported as a quasi-panacea, credible literature has evidence to the contrary. Some trials show that the “mediterranean diet” is superior for health than the “standard american diet”, but elucidating the exact ingredients and macronutrients that mediate these beneficial effects is paramount to confidently prescribe food as medicine for both obese individuals, biohackers, and everyone in between. A DAO focused on optimizing human health via experimenting with nutrition would require validation of a proof-of-diet-adherence protocol. With subsidized, bulk-ordered diets and a mechanism for validation of adherence to the protocol, a decentralized community could gather data on various diets and their impacts on specific biomarkers of interest, such as weight, heart rate variability, and body composition. This strategy may be optimized for a BioDAO with metabolic health patients, such as diabetics, but may also be successful independently.

Others

Disease/indication focused:

• Rare diseases
• Neurology
• Immunology
• Oncology
• Cardiology
• Pediatrics
• Regenerative medicine
• Mental health
• Long Covid and other long term burdens caused by viral infections
• Metabolic diseases, decentralized insulin manufacturing
• Chronic pain
• Pulmonology

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Infrastructure/technology/service focused:

• Drug discovery and development, e.g. open source AI/ML
• Decentralized data sharing and analysis platform for biomedical research
• Gene therapy
• Decentralized health insurance
• Decentralized clinical trials
• Diagnostics development
• Drug delivery
• Natural products drug development
• Research chemicals

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‍Apply Now

BioDAOs have the potential to revolutionize the way scientific research is conducted and how communities collaborate to find solutions for pressing healthcare and sustainability challenges. By decentralizing research efforts, bioDAOs can harness the power of collective intelligence to tackle underserved research areas, reduce the time and resources needed for experimentation, and ultimately expedite the discovery of effective interventions. 

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As more individuals and communities recognize the value and potential of bioDAOs, we can expect their impact to extend beyond the fields of ADHD and nootropics, sleep, and nutrition to numerous other areas of scientific inquiry, ultimately leading to a more democratized and innovative research landscape. 

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Apply now for cohort two, kicking off this fall, and join forces with like-minded innovators to shape the future of scientific research through bioDAOs.

• Click here to apply for Cohort 2 (launching in Q4 2024).
• Click here to apply to become a mentor.
• Join our Discord to talk to us!