In an exciting first step for ValleyDAO, Dr Rodrigo Ledesma Amaro has received funding to engineer oleaginous yeast to sustainably produce oils at an industrial scale, via an IP-NFT. Rodrigo’s work lights the way for future synthetic biology researchers looking to receive funding from ValleyDAO.

In a promising step for all women, AthenaDAO has committed $120K to Dr Mario Cordero’s work in ovarian aging. By funding overlooked research areas, AthenaDAO pushes the needle of women’s health forward, inviting all to contribute.

This guide explores raising money for research using tokenized Intellectual Property (IP) rights including IP Non-Fungible Tokens (IP-NFTs) and a new token type called IPTs mintable by IP-NFT holders. Note, this guide does not provide legal advice, but rather offers general information. Always consult a legal professional before using IP-NFTs and IPTs.

BioDAOs, such as VitaDAO, are using intellectual property non-fungible tokens (IP-NFTs) developed by Molecule to secure biotech IP and R&D data rights on Ethereum. Now BioDAOs are able to use their IP-NFTs to mint IPTs, fungible tokenized memberships in IP pools unique to their parent IP-NFTs. These IP pools, governed by token holder-set rules, provide a platform for BioDAOs to empower their members to collectively develop and commercialize IP and R&D data. IPTs can help tackle issues plaguing the current biotech IP market, facilitating efficient management of biotech IP risk, capital formation for scientific research, greater patient involvement in therapeutics development, and increased transparency and liquidity in a historically opaque market.

“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome” — Charlie Munger

Intellectual property is the expression of human creativity and innovation. It's the invisible fortress that protects our ideas, safeguarding them not as mere thoughts but as valuable assets. Intellectual property is the recognition that our capacity to imagine, invent, and create is not only precious but also worth protecting. It propels progress and cultivates a culture of continual learning, encouraging us to reach further, dream bigger, and strive harder in our pursuit of knowledge and advancement.

On the 17th of August 2021, the first IP-NFT was traded, ushering in a new way of funding research. Since then, a total of six projects have been funded through the Molecule system.

HairDAO, a BioDAO that is currently a part of the bio.xyz accelerator, had their first IP-NFT transaction. For $75k, HairDAO will gain access to the initial data from Dr. Ralf Paus’ lab Cutaneon. Then, based on the results, HairDAO may opt to test combinations of T3/T4 thyroid hormone at different dosages for an additional $50k.

The future of research is collaborative, digital, and highly autonomous. Patents today are not. We are building the intellectual property system that will help usher in this new era.

In 2021, our team at Molecule published the first implementation of intellectual property NFTs (IP-NFTs). A solution that wraps intellectual property rights such as patents, datasets, or contractual agreements inside a non-fungible token, enabling easy transfer and collective ownership over such assets. Together with VitaDAO, we managed to demonstrate that this new asset class can be a viable investment instrument for biotech research.

We are pleased to announce that Molecule’s IP-NFT funding framework will facilitate critical preclinical work in Dr. Amit Sharma’s laboratory at the SRF Research Center to eliminate the accumulation of senescent cells in age-related diseases.

Today we’re excited to announce Molecule’s IP-NFT funding paradigm has crossed the ocean to support age-related oral health research at the University of Washington in Seattle.

We are delighted to share that the laboratory of Evandro Fang at the Akershus University Hospital and the University of Oslo became the third ever lab to fund their research project via Molecule’s IP-NFT framework - The discovery of novel mitophagy activators for Alzheimer´s disease and healthy longevity.

Paul Kohlhaas visited the Podcast of Andrew Steinwald, and spoke about his path into the pharmaceutical space and web3. He shares his experiences in biohacking, the pharma industry, the drug development process and how web3 could play a crucial role in making drug development more efficient, fair and transparent. This is achieved through BioDAOs an open source approach of pharmaceutical early stage research and leveraging the traits of NFTs through and a new standard, the IP-NFT. Molecule is a company that is virtualizing and decentralizing how drug development works. They do this by attaching data and IP rights to non-fungible tokens (NFT's) and then bringing the core IP into web3. This makes the intellectual property liquid, which is very hard to achieve in biotech today, and also enables price discovery around IP. Molecule has created a curation market where people can trade and discover therapeutics for drugs. Molecule has also started building biotech DAOs, which are research collectives that are comprised of patients, investors, and researchers in a specific therapeutic area. The mission is to democratize access to medicine by empowering researchers and patients to become co-owners of the IP and data associated with a new therapeutic. Paul describes how the company's IP-NFTs work to store data associated with a new therapeutic and how they can be used to fractionalize ownership of the IP. He also walks through the company's roadmap and explains how they plan to decentralize ownership of the data and IP associated with a new therapeutic. Paul discusses the origins of VitaDAO and IP-NFT, the process of setting up a DAO, and the long-term vision for a DAO-based ecosystem for pharmaceutical research and development.The grand vision for the projects is to develop a drug that is enabled and discovered through the process and reaches patients in a eight to ten year timeframe. He also discusses the potential for IP-NFTs to be used to fractionalize the ownership of IP and allow patients to contribute funding to research."

TL;DR: This week, the first university biomedical intellectual property (IP) and research project was funded as an NFT (non-fungible token), enabled by a pioneering innovation at Molecule. The IP-NFT enables new fundraising and collaboration strategies for researchers by combining legal and technical frameworks with NFT technology. Early-stage research can be financed without endless grant applications, creating a startup and raising VC or needing to file a patent.

Throughout the past 2 weeks VitaDAO Token Holders got to vote on the proposal “VDP-5 Scheibye-Knudsen Lab Funding” to fund longevity at the Scheibye-Knudsen Lab in Copenhagen. The voting passed with 2.1M token votes and 88% of votes supporting the proposition. With the proposal having been approved by the DAO members, the lab in Copenhagen will receive $250.000 for the first research phase of the project over a period of 12 months. After successful completion and review of Phase 1 by the DAO, another $250.000 for an additional 12 months of research could be handed out to the lab. As part of this deal, VitaDAO will fully own the intellectual property (IP) resulting from the research project. The first biopharma IP that will be owned and managed by a DAO. Ownership and access management to the IP will be handled via Molecule’s novel IPNFT framework. The infrastructure is utilizing Ethereum ERC721, Arweave and Nevermined.

Globally, early-stage biopharma research suffers from chronic underfunding, leading to discontinued research in the early stages of the pharma development cycle. This is happening so regularly that academia has coined the phase of research up until clinical trials the “Valley of Death”. Researchers struggle to acquire funding due to three distinct reasons:Lack of visibility and connection to relevant investors: Researchers struggle to connect and acquire funding from private investorsLegal complexity of IP deals: Deals such as licence agreements surrounding pre-patent and patent IP are complex and often need legal supportDifficulty of determining the value of early-stage biopharma assets: Both funders and researchers have trouble assessing the value of early-stage research.NFTs have created an unprecedented revolution in the creative space, rethinking copyright, royalties and IP. We believe it will also be instrumental in solving the above-stated problems. In this article, we are going to focus on the first technical implementation of a biopharma IPNFT. It builds on many concepts other influential thinkers in the Web3 space have conjured in the past. For example, if you are interested in how general IP can be combined with NFTs, have a look at Trent McConaghy 3 part series on building IP NFTs with ERC721.

Imagine a world where patients directly fund researchers developing the next therapeutic breakthrough they need. One where drug development is collaborative, open, and decentralized — an open bazaar anyone with the right intentions can join. A system that could radically increase the diversity of treatments, and lower costs and time to market.