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BioDAOs are poised to transform scientific research, collaboration and funding. Now, after successfully wrapping up cohort one, we’re inviting visionary biotech builders to apply for our upcoming second cohort, starting fall 2023 - details and application process discussed below.
bio.xyz is an accelerator for biotech DAOs and DeSci projects. In April 2023, bio.xyz celebrated the graduation of the first intake of BioDAOs - HairDAO, PsyDAO, ValleyDAO, AthenaDAO, and CryoDAO. After continuous support to these BioDAOs, they have taken significant strides towards securing a strong foothold in commercial research, and we remain committed to offering them fundraising assistance in their final stages of development.
Building on this success, we are excited to announce that bio.xyz is now opening applications for our upcoming second cohort. Read on to discover the world of BioDAOs, the potential areas for future BioDAOs, and how bio.xyz can help you to be a part of this transformative movement.
The inaugural BioDAO cohort, has made measurable progress within their respective fields.
BioDAOs are decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) focused on supporting commercial research in a particular area of scientific research, with applications including, but not limited to, healthcare and sustainability.
BioDAOs operate on common principles and infrastructure, fostering communities around specific research areas. Despite the subjectivity of data and challenges in recognizing effective interventions, BioDAOs empower individuals to pool together resources for mutual benefit, reducing time, and resources spent on personal experimentation. They are not just altruistic but serve as efficient pathways to personalized health and wellness solutions. Successful BioDAOs often emerge from strong online communities, typically focus on underserved research areas, align with web3 interests, and involve consumers who already spend on relevant products.
Our hypothesis is that the best BioDAOs will not be our ideas, but arise organically and continue to grow with our support. Below are examples of BioDAO applications we believe may have promise, but encourage you to apply even if you are working on a DAO or concept outside of what is mentioned.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Disease/indication focused:
Infrastructure/technology/service focused:
We provide you funding, regulatory support, technical support, community support - but more importantly: commitment to build. Below is an overview of exactly how we do this.
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. 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.
Don't miss the opportunity to be part of this transformative movement—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 (applications close Aug 15th).
Click here to apply to become a mentor.
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To our committed bio.xyz community and biotech enthusiasts worldwide,Today, we announce the launch of the bio.xyz Launchpad - to ensure decentralized research communities have the essential fuel they need to support translational science and transform discoveries into cures.
We want to open-source knowledge about building at the intersection of web3 and biotech and we are excited to share and scale our learnings and frameworks with the broader ecosystem by offering hands-on builder support and funding to ambitious DAO-builders shaping the future of decentralized science.
Albert, co-initiator of ValleyDAO, discovered DeSci through VitaDAO and received support from bio.xyz to launch the community-owned synbio innovation ecosystem. ValleyDAO focuses on advancing climate and food synthetic biology through three initial academic research projects.
