By KarenZ, Foresight News
The DeSci field has risen rapidly due to the favor of Vitalik Buterin and Zhao Changpeng, especially after Binance announced its investment in BIO Protocol and was frequently mentioned in Devcon, the popularity has risen sharply, and the biological experiment tokens RIF and URO tokens on pump.science have increased by a thousand times. Today, we will focus on the leading project in the DeSci field - VitaDAO.
What is VitaDAO?
VitaDAO is a community-owned project dedicated to funding early-stage longevity research, launched in July 2021. Its goal is to drive scientific innovation through the collective power of the community, research and support projects aimed at extending human lifespan and preventing age-related diseases.
In January 2023, VitaDAO completed a round of financing of $4.1 million. Strategic investors include Pfizer Ventures, Shine Capital, L1 Digital, DeSci and Web3 organizations Beaker DAO and Spaceship DAO, as well as Balaji Srinivasan (former CTO of Coinbase) and Joe Betts-LaCroix (Retro Biosciences). Previously, in September 2022, Pfizer had invested $500,000 in VitaDAO to accelerate the progress of longevity research and development.
In the funding news at the time, VitaDAO also stated that Pfizer was the first pharmaceutical company to vote on DAO proposals within VitaDAO and would also participate in VitaDAO in a variety of other ways, including deal flow, scientific evaluation, incubation and commercialization.
It is worth mentioning that Paul Kohlhaas, the author of the VitaDAO white paper, is not only the administrator of the token economics working group and a member of the technical and legal working group, but also the founder and CEO of the DeSci project Molecule and BIO Protocol, and has worked at Consensys. Tyler Golato is also the co-founder of VitaDAO, Molecule, and BIO Protocol (in the subsequent article series, the author will introduce the Molecule project separately).
What is the progress of VitaDAO?
According to the latest data on VitaDAO’s official website, VitaDAO has deployed $4.2 million in funds to date and funded 24 projects. From the following funded projects, we can feel VitaDAO’s extensive layout in promoting longevity research.
- Matrix Bio: Using high molecular weight hyaluronic acid from naked mole rats to study its anti-cancer and longevity effects on humans, launched in March 2023. In October of the same year, VitaDAO launched the biotechnology company Matrix Bio and provided it with $300,000 in funding, which will be raised through IP-NFT fragmentation;
- Scheibye-Knudsen Lab: Using machine learning to process 1.04 billion prescription data to understand the impact of drugs on human life expectancy;
- Fang Lab: Combining AI technology and wet lab validation platform to identify new mitophagy-activating drug candidates for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease;
- An Lab: Focused on reversing periodontitis;
- Humanity: This project connects wearable devices to monitor digital biomarkers to quantify aging scores and provide a scientific basis for personalized aging management;
- GERO: Using physics and AI to understand the aging process and create a pipeline of drug candidates and therapies for multiple age-related chronic diseases to slow down aging;
- Oisín Biotechnologies: Developing genetic drugs to combat sarcopenia and other age-related diseases, the product line includes therapies that stimulate muscle growth, selectively destroy fat cells, and eliminate senescent cells. Oisín Biotechnologie also completed a $15 million Series A financing in July 2024, led by AbbVie Ventures, the investment arm of US pharmaceutical giant AbbVie. These funds will be mainly used to study the elimination of unwanted fat cells and the enhancement of muscle mass.
VitaDAO has released its governance token VITA three years ago, and the current market value of VITA is $130 million. It is worth mentioning that the VitaDAO treasury currently holds assets worth approximately $55.84 million, including $14.3 million in VITA and $1.14 million in WETH, as well as a series of IP assets and IP-NFTs worth $38 million. In addition, VitaDAO will also receive 21 million BIO tokens through Bio Protocol's bio/acc rewards program. BIO Protocol has completed its initial token offering, and founder Paul Kohlhaas said that BIO's Launchpad and token transferability features will be launched in the early first quarter of next year.
VitaDAO also launched the VITA-FAST token in collaboration with Viktor Korolchuk Lab at Newcastle University, whose team is dedicated to identifying compounds that may initiate autophagy and rejuvenate aging cells. The VITA-FAST token sale ended last year with an oversubscription of 1,700%, and has risen 6 times in the past week, with a market value of $23 million. VITA-FAST was created by a vote of VITA token holders, and officials said it was also the first longevity IPT achieved in Molecule through tokenized Korolchuk IP-NFT.
When talking about IP-NFT, we have to mention Molecule's Catalyst platform, which realizes democratic funding and IP tokenization through IP-NFT and IP Token (IPT). Among them, R&D projects can bundle their potential intellectual property into an IP-NFT and tokenize the IP-NFT into an IP token (the governance token of IP-NFT). Then, the IP can be directly decentralized to individuals (IP token holders) and funds can be raised, thereby realizing partial governance of the IP.
In addition, the VitaRNA/Artan Bio team, initially funded by VitaDAO ($91,000), recently successfully identified and validated two promising lead candidates from a preliminary screening of 15 candidate oligonucleotides, and also entered into a manufacturing partnership with biotechnology multinational Lonza to ensure that VitaRNA's lead candidate ARTAN-102 will be produced in accordance with industry standards for preclinical and clinical studies. VitaRNA/Artan Bio previously raised $300,000 through IP-NFT tokenization, and will conduct the next round of sales in the first quarter of 2025.
In terms of recent progress, on October 17, VitaDAO launched VitaLabs, an internal interdisciplinary scientist network, aimed at developing aging research internally and enhancing democratic ownership of intellectual property through intellectual property tokens (IPTs). Specifically, VitaLabs will form interdisciplinary teams in each 4-month window to discover ideas and conduct experiments, as well as regularly update data, and successful projects will advance to in-depth research and potential derivative creation. VitaDAO also launched the VitaLabs Fellowship Program to attract talents to participate in longevity research.
During Devcon, VitaDAO also showcased its first longevity product, VD001, a high-dose spermidine supplement approved by the Thai Food and Drug Administration.
The dynamic progress of VitaDAO and its funded projects described in this article may not be comprehensive. Given the complexity and long-term nature of the anti-aging and longevity research field, although it faces doubts from some community users, most people firmly believe that through the power of technology, although humans cannot reverse the laws of nature, they are moving towards a healthier and more vibrant future.
