Curetopia Raises $1.77M to Accelerate Rare Disease Cures Using DeSci
Highlights:
- Curetopia, the first Biotech DAO (BioDAO) on Solana, has raised $1.77M from over 1,000 individual funders to develop treatments in the $1T+ rare disease space.
- The raise comes on the heels of a recent discovery by Curetopia which could lead to the first-ever treatment for a disease developed by a DeSci project, with potential proceeds flowing back to the DAO.
- In the past 3 months, DeSci has raised over $15 million in research funding, providing a lifeline to scientists amid ongoing NIH and NSF funding freezes.
Launched via the Bio Protocol launchpad, Curetopia is accelerating drug discovery for the 10,000+ rare diseases often overlooked by Big Pharma.
Curetopia's DAO enables rare disease patients and researchers to crowdfund using crypto and utilize the funding to develop treatments co-owned by the DAO. Patients who participate in Curetopia’s decentralized trials receive $CURES tokens, allowing participants to become stakeholders in medicines born from their data.
The raise comes on the heels of Curetopia’s recent discovery of a potential treatment for AARS2, a fatal rare disease with no approved treatments. Curetopia is in the process of filing a provisional patent based on the findings and tokenizing it, with proceeds flowing back to the DAO.
Curetopia is part of the emerging DeSci movement, which allows patient and researcher communities to interact directly on peer-to-peer networks. In the past 3 months, DeSci has raised over $15 million in research funding, providing a lifeline to scientists amid ongoing National Institute of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) funding freezes.
From Closed Laboratories to Open Science
Curetopia’s model isn’t limited to AARS2. The DAO’s decentralized, AI-driven approach can be applied across thousands of rare diseases, each with an average market size of $200-300M. In its initial phases, Curetopia will develop cures from repurposed, pre-approved drugs to bypass regulatory bottleknecks and accelerate treatment delivery.
Curetopia is led by Dr. Ethan Perlstein (Harvard PhD, Y Combinator alum), who previously advanced a drug to Phase 3 trials for just $5M—a fraction of traditional costs. Perlstein, who worked with rare disease families to find cures & run distributed trials for 10+ years, has noted that several blockbuster drugs like Viagra and Statins were originally developed for rare diseases before achieving widespread commercial success.
Perlstein said: “Rare diseases have been overlooked by traditional scientific institutions for too long. By decentralizing the creation and commercialization of rare disease drugs, Curetopia can create a new kind of community-driven medicine where patients and patient families are in control of their cure odyssey.”
Resources:
About Curetopia
Curetopia is a non-profit association building the first biotech Decentralized Autonomous Organization (BioDAO) committed to eradicating rare diseases through decentralized science (DeSci). Curetopia addresses the unmet needs of over 10,000 rare diseases, which burden 1 in 10 people globally and impose a $1 trillion economic cost in the U.S. alone. Curetopia empowers patient communities with blockchain-based funding and tools to influence research and ensure anti-shelving of promising therapies. Focused initially on drug repurposing for inherited metabolic diseases, Curetopia leverages model organisms, tokenized intellectual property, and community-driven clinical studies. Its roadmap envisions scalable therapeutic solutions, fostering equity and sustainability in rare disease research and treatment innovation.
