Zima Red ep 117: Paul Kohlhaas - DeSci: The Future of Decentralized Science
Primer: Why is pharma research so costly and what can we do about it? In this episode of the Zima Red podcast, Paul Kohlhaas shares about his interest in biohacking and crypto, and how he combines them both to create the future of Decentralized Science.
Background
Founder of Molecule
When he was a teenager, he spent a lot of time on online biohacking forums
These communities explored chemical compounds in an open fashion
Went on to study Economics
Started trading biotech stocks during university
In 2013, one of his friends did an internship at Bitcoin Suisse and started telling him about Bitcoin
Fell into the rabbit hole and taught himself how to code
After completing his studies, he moved to South Africa to work briefly in private equity
Afterwards, he started his first company called Linum Labs. Started building apps on Ethereum
Got to know Simon de la Rouviere, the grandfather of bonding curves
In early 2017, he started working at ConsenSys. Did work on data attestations
Had a revelation of attaching a composition of matter patent to an NFT, leading to what he is building today
What Is Biohacking?
Interested in 2 areas:
How nutraceuticals, certain chemicals, or psychedelics can fundamentally alter your consciousness
Hacking your system to behave in a different way
Examples:
Bodybuilders boosting their metabolism
Using nutraceuticals to boost brain function
Meditation could be considered a form of biohacking to gain more focus and clarity
The Open Source Pharma Movement
Early on, Molecule was called Open Source Pharma and the Open Source Pharma Foundation
There’s many areas of medicine that are not interesting to pharma companies
For example, some rare diseases have a very small population and pharma companies are not interested to bring a drug to the market
There’s also an uphill battle to get a drug approved by the FDA
The Open Source Pharma Foundation consists of researchers from various universities around the world
These researchers commit new drug targets to an open source repo on Github
Once you make a Github commit, that molecule becomes unpatentable. It will become a generic drug that no pharma companies will bring to the market
What Do These Research Look Like On Github?
In most cases, it would just be a dataset describing a new molecule
Why Is Pharma Research So Expensive?
The innovation and approval process for pharmaceuticals have not changed in the past 50 years
It’s really expensive to bring a drug to market
This means that Pharma companies are the only ones who can bring drugs to the market
Many biotech companies do not have the intention to bring a drug to market themselves
Biotech companies either become an acquisition target for a pharma company or IPO to raise enough capital
The Main Cost In Researching Pharmaceuticals
Have to differentiate between preclinical stage and clinical stage drug development
Costs have come down tremendously for the preclinical stage as they can do outsourcing
Clinical stage is much more expensive
What they are trying to enable is decentralized clinical trials
For every additional player in the pharmaceutical value chain, cost increases as everyone is trying to make profits
Another contributor to the high cost is that many drugs fail
Principal-Agent problem: Biotech companies are incentivized to show good data to pharma companies so that they can get acquired
Molecule
A decentralized biotech protocol
They are trying to virtualize and decentralize how drug development works
2 core value drivers in drug development:
Intellectual property in the form of patents
Data produced about these compounds
Data has become increasingly virtual while IP has yet to be virtualized
At Molecule, they attach both data and IP rights to NFTs
Developed a new framework called the IP NFT
This makes the IP liquid and enables price discovery
“Some of our early thinking was, in essence, hey, wait, what if we had like a meme market, but for therapeutics, for drugs, where our patients, researchers could essentially enable price discovery for therapeutics together.”
- Paul Kohlhaas
Data that people commit to the public repos would influence the price of the therapeutic
Decided not to have the typical NFT speculator audience engaged in the IP. Created biotech DAOs that comprise of patients, investors, and researchers to actually develop those drugs
Helped launch VitaDAO in June 2021. VitaDAO curates and collects IP NFTs focused on longevity research
Currently building a DAO focused on psychedelics and mental health
Their IP NFT
The IP NFT consists of 2 components:
A one-to-one legal agreement
A data storage layer that lives on top of Filecoin and Arweave
Their app enables you to fund researchers that are seeking funding to run experiments
You enter a sponsored research agreement with the researcher. You now own the IP and the data
The IP agreement is encrypted
The identity of the molecules/resulting data is not made available to the public unless you choose to do so
Biotech companies can make an on-chain bid to buy your IP NFT
If you want to patent the discovery, the IP NFT contains everything you need to bring to the patent office
VitaDAO is exploring fractionalizing one of its IP NFTs
Their Mission
To democratize access to medicine
There’s 2 groups that are disenfranchised:
Researchers who are doing the work. They typically do not see any upside unless they go the hardcore biotech VC/IPO route
Patients
Response From Regulatory Agencies
Currently focused on early stage preclinical development, where the regulatory overhead is quite small
The IP NFTs are fully forward compatible. They can be purchased by a pharma company to actually develop the drug
His Dream Scenario Of The Drug Development Process
A researcher at MIT researching a rare disease molecule gets financing by a rare disease DAO for 300k
The IP NFT is co-owned by the researcher, the university, and the rare disease DAO
Data flows to the IP NFT
The IP NFT is spun into a small biotech company that is owned by patients
The biotech company receives funding to perform the first stages of clinical trials
A pharma company comes in and shares the cost of the development with the rare disease DAO
The drug gets FDA approval
The drug is majority patient-owned
The pharma company uses their network to distribute the drug without needing to overcharge for it
Why Did He Focus On VitaDAO And Longevity Research First?
Longevity research is a really interesting topic
“Longevity research, in my eyes, is not about living forever. It's about living a much healthier, longer lifespan.”
- Paul Kohlhaas
Longevity research touches many areas of medicine, which allows them to quickly branch into other disease areas
Aging research should be democratized
Is super conscious on product-market fit with Web3 (e.g. difficult to launch a breast cancer DAO because this patient group would not be native to using Discord, Twitter, MetaMask, etc.)
VitaDAO: Transferring IP On-Chain As An NFT
💡 In August 2021, VitaDAO transferred some sort of IP on-chain as an NFT.
Was the first end-to-end licensing with Dr Morten Scheibye-Knudsen from the University of Copenhagen
It’s an ongoing study analyzing 10 molecules that could have life extending properties
The researcher has joined VitaDAO and is also participating in the governance of VitaDAO through the VITA token
The research was attached to an IP NFT, the DAO purchased the IP NFT, and the funds were sent to the university to kickstart the work
As A Regular Person, How Can People Participate In VitaDAO?
Their Discord has plenty of people who are interested in longevity research but are not research scientists
The core of VitaDAO, called the Longevity Working Group, consists of over 100 scientists from across the world
The VITA token is used to influence what kind of work you would like to see funded
The Longevity Working Group would make proposals to the DAO and token holders to vote on what research should get funded
If there’s positive results, token holders get to decide what to do with the research
They are building DAO frameworks so that people can set up DAOs that focus on different sectors of the market
Grand 5-10 Year Vision
One of these IP NFT drugs actually reaching patients and doing so at a much lower cost than the current system
“What we find so incredible about the emergence of VitaDAO was that VitaDAO essentially turned into a mid-size biotech company just comparatively in terms of staff, knowledge, and expertise, but in the course of 3 to 6 months, and with much, much less funding.”
- Paul Kohlhaas
Single Favourite NFT
Sad Girls Bar by Glam Beckett
Most Controversial Thought On The Drug Development Industry
If our legal system changes, we can actually treat drug development like software
If He Could Improve One Thing In The Drug Development Research Industry
Licensing frameworks replacing patents as drivers and protectors of innovation
Who Does He Look Up To And Why
Elon Musk for inspiring a whole generation of builders to push the limits of what’s possible
Vitalik Buterin
IP NFTs In 3 Years
A highly liquid market around IP assets
All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. Summaries are prepared by The Reading Ape. While reasonable efforts are made to provide accurate content, any errors in interpreting and summarizing the source material are ours alone. We disclaim any liability associated with the use of our content.