Desci Digest #002
It’s been more than a month since the first issue of the DeSci Digest. That means that we have a lot to update you on.
The reception after the first issue has been great. I’m really happy to see the community finding this newsletter useful, and I’m excited to keep writing it. Nevertheless, it has been a rather interesting few weeks in DeSci, let’s go over some of the highlights.
Don’t know much about DeSci? Check out my first issue to find out more
tl;dr
HairDAO IP-NFT mint
VitaDAO funding announcement
LabDAO PleX release
Featured project: DeSci Labs and nodes
HairDAO’s first IP-NFT mint
Before we talk about this monumental event in DeSci, let’s talk a little bit about what HairDAO is. HairDAO is one of the first BioDAOs created out of Molecule’s bio.xyz BioDAO accelerator. Let’s dive deeper into this.
BioDAO - This is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) which will fund and incubate early stage research projects. This is all to make the process of R&D and distribution of products community owned and operated, hopefully making it faster than traditional pharma. A BioDAO is a blanket term over a DAO that will fund bio projects. VitaDAO is an example of a BioDAO.
Bio.xyz - This is Molecule’s BioDAO incubator. These DAOs will receive $100k in seed funding as well as support from Molecule’s team and other advisors in a variety of areas, including legal, scientific, technological, and operations. There’s a few popular DAOs that have came out of Bio.xyz, including PsyDAO, which funds research in psychedelic medicine, and AthenaDAO, which funds Women’s reproductive heath research.
On Febuary 16, HairDAO became the second BioDAO to mint an IP-NFT, second to VitaDAO. In November, the community voted to to fund their first research project with Professor Ralf Paus, a “top hair loss researcher.”
The research will test the effects on synthetic T3 and T4 thyroid hormones on hair regrowth. Paus has done research in this area before. exploring the growth of hair follicles in a thyroid hormone-infused solution. If you want to learn more about the specifics of the project, check out this article.
This is a really big step in the world of DeSci. This is Molecule’s first Bio.xyz DAO → IP-NFT pipeline. VitaDAO doesn’t count because it was partially founded by members from Molecule. HairDAO was founded by two entrepreneurs from NYC, not related to Molecule at all, Andrew Bakst and Andrew Verbinnen. This is an excellent step. We are getting more people involved in DeSci, other than some of the first movers in the space.
There is always a lot of talk in the DeSci space. It’s great to see the team at HairDAO walk the talk, funding a research project with a prominent researcher and minting an IP-NFT.
Of course, this IP-NFT model hasn’t been completely proven yet. It has been shown to help fund projects, but it is still unclear what the next steps are. This is uncharted territory, and I am looking forward to seeing what HairDAO does.
VitaDAO funding announcement
I know this is a bit late, but I think it’s big enough to warrant a mention in this newsletter. At the end of January, VitaDAO closed a $4.1M seed round, with funding from Pfizer Ventures, Shine Capital, and from angels like Balaji Srinivasan.
From VitaDAO: “The proceeds from the fundraise will be used to fund further longevity research projects and precede the spinout of VitaDAO's first biotech startups, scheduled in the first quarter of 2023, as well as further investment in commercialization and licensing of its IP-NFT assets through its partnership with Molecule DAO.”
This is great news for DeSci, especially with mainstream VCs and pharma looking to put some money in. Of course, there are a few skeptics here, mainly questioning the Pfizer investment. Many say that this goes against the ethos of decentralized science, that we want to remove ourselves from the bureaucracy of big pharma. On the other hand, it means that mainstream companies are starting to become aware of what is going on in DeSci. We will see how this partnership pans. There will be many more times where big pharma gets involved in DeSci, and we will see how the sentiment shifts.
LabDAO released PLEX
LabDAO has been working on PLEX for a while now. PLEX is an open-source client that allows you to run comp bio apps on the cloud, straight from your own command line. PLEX uses IPFS and Bacalhau to reproducibly run code and share data.
In my opinion, this is the biggest update in this newsletter. A major problem in bioinformatics, and in research as a whole is reproducibility. Most people don’t know how to code, setting up a cloud instance is hard, and moving data around is a pain. PLEX lets researchers plug in one line into their terminal, and without having to worry about the environment or whats going on under the hood, get the results they want. LabDAO currently has two protein folding tools built into PLEX, but they are working to add more for a variety of workflows. It’s super easy to install and start using PLEX:
Highlighted Project: DeSci Labs
DeSci Labs are one of my favorite projects in the ecosystem. They’re currently working on DeSci Nodes, which lets you connect all part of your research, code, data, figures, and others, into one place. As I mentioned in the previous section, a major issue in research is reproducibility. DeSci nodes works to make this less of a problem.
DeSci nodes aggregate information from a variety of sources into one place. Instead of having to go to Github, lab pages, and publishers to get the information you need, it’s all in a DeSci Node. It’s also interactive. You’ll be able to highlight over a figure to see how it was generated. You’ll be able to view and run the code that is attached to the manuscript to generate the same numbers in the paper. These are just some of the things that DeSci nodes do.
This is what research papers should be. A single pdf, with occasional links to Google Drives for data or Github repos for code is a thing of the past.
Want to learn more, or publish your own paper with DeSci nodes, check out the docs here. DeSci Labs are looking for beta testers.
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Long Live the Scientist