Realigning Patients & Scientists Through Decentralized Science (DeSci): A Primer on BIO
“The biggest innovations of the 21st century will be at the intersection of biology and technology.” — Steve Jobs
Our mission at BIO is to leverage crypto technologies to accelerate the commercialization of cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, ultimately expanding access to life-changing innovations for those who need them most.
Who’s that, exactly? For the purposes of this article, we’ll highlight:
- Medical patients who want a more efficient way to fund and obtain life-changing treatments and cures.
- Scientists who need better access to capital and talent to accelerate and commercialize their research.
Supercharging science
Inspired by Professor Andrew Lo’s Megafund concept, BIO protocol accelerates (and democratizes) scientific progress to help patients and scientists overcome some of the typical hurdles of biomedical R&D.
Due to the high-risk nature of early-stage science funding, too much medical innovation fails to attract sufficient capital and is left collecting dust on the shelves of academia. At the same time, the medical industry has increasingly followed a herd mentality in prioritizing low-risk innovation with marginal societal benefits.
BIO protocol helps online communities take science into their own hands. Using decentralized technologies and new economic and legal frameworks, BIO seeks to unite isolated islands of knowledge, data and capital in order to slash drug development cycles and costs, while creating shared IP ownership between patients and scientists worldwide.
For scientists, biotech founders and patients looking for more exposure to scientific innovation, the opportunities are vast: supercharging R&D productivity for researchers, unlocking radical new therapies, and providing affordable medicines and health products to patients globally.
How to get in on the action
Our growing network of bioDAOs are like rocket fuel for traditional science stakeholders, uniting patients and scientists around new ways to crowdfund and commercialize research, with more transparency and less friction compared to traditional funding and IP development models.
BIO is like the spark, and its function is five-fold.
- Curation: Vote on the scientific communities (bioDAOs) you’re most passionate about.
- Funding: Direct capital to those scientific causes, funding R&D that results in community-owned IP.
- Liquidity: More funding for one bioDAO means the whole network grows in value.
- Rewards: Incentives for bioDAOs to hit key milestones, and for patients to contribute data and use products.
- Governance: Community members get to decide on how to use the scientific IP.
For scientists and patients, this simple yet effective model innovates traditional science in numerous ways, including:
- More early-stage funding and coordination on causes that might be historically underfunded and overlooked by Pharma.
- Improved operational and executional efficiency — entity formation, payments, decision-making, and more.
- Creates shared IP ownership between a diverse array of biotech participants, including patients, scientists and biotech entrepreneurs.
These frameworks all come to life within bioDAOs, essentially vertically-integrated R&D organizations that can vastly accelerate the growth and success of modern-day biotech innovation.
These bioDAOs can monetize in several ways:
- Selling their IP to pharma
- Selling health products directly to consumers
- Selling services or data to other bioDAOs
For scientists and researchers, joining (or forming) a bioDAO puts you in the driver's seat of your scientific goals and ambitions. BioDAOs let you build a different type of community with common interests around your work while incentivizing others to help commercialize it because they, too, can benefit.
For patients, joining and funding a bioDAO around the treatments most critical to your health allows you to quickly and efficiently form a dedicated online scientific community that can attract capital and talent to your cause. This unlocks a new path towards developing a medicine that might change your life or the life of someone close to you.
A repaired roadmap for scientific innovation
Across both key demographics, bioDAOs catalyze novel discovery in increasingly urgent medical fields — longevity, brain health, synthetic biology, women’s health, hair loss, as well as new and emerging scientific fields represented by future DAOs voted into BIO’s ecosystem.
Our ecosystem has already experienced great success in partnering with world-renowned scientists and universities, and deploying over $10M in science funding across tokenized IP assets (what we call IPTs), traditional biotech companies, and consumer products like HairDAO's Follicool shampoo.
If you're ready for a new path forward for your scientific research or a medical treatment essential to your well-being, head here to join or form a bioDAO.
