Author: KarenZ, Foresight News
The DeSci field has rapidly risen due to the favor of Vitalik Buterin and Zhao Changpeng, especially after Binance announced its investment in BIO Protocol and after frequent mentions in Devcon, the hype has sharply increased, with biological experimental tokens RIF and URO on pump.science witnessing thousandfold increases. 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 longevity research, launched in July 2021. Its goal is to leverage the collective power of the community to promote scientific innovation 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, with strategic investors including Pfizer Ventures, Shine Capital, L1 Digital, and DeSci and Web3 organizations Beaker DAO and Spaceship DAO, along with Balaji Srinivasan (former CTO of Coinbase) and Joe Betts-LaCroix (Retro Biosciences). Previously, in September 2022, Pfizer had already invested $500,000 in VitaDAO to accelerate the progress of longevity research.
In the financing news at that time, VitaDAO also stated that Pfizer was the first pharmaceutical company to vote on DAO proposals within VitaDAO and would be involved in various other ways, including transaction processes, scientific assessments, incubation, and commercialization.
It is worth mentioning that Paul Kohlhaas, the author of the VitaDAO white paper, is not only the administrator of the tokenomics 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 previously worked at Consensys. Tyler Golato is also a co-founder of VitaDAO, Molecule, and BIO Protocol (the author will introduce the Molecule project separately in a later article series).
What progress has VitaDAO made?
According to the latest data from the VitaDAO official website, VitaDAO has deployed $4.2 million in funding to date, financing 24 projects. From the following partially funded projects, we can sense VitaDAO's extensive layout in promoting longevity research.
Matrix Bio: Utilizing high molecular weight hyaluronic acid research from naked mole rats to study its anti-cancer and lifespan-extending effects, initiated in March 2023. In October of the same year, VitaDAO launched the biotechnology company Matrix Bio, providing it with $300,000 in funding, and will raise funds through IP-NFT fragmentation.
Scheibye-Knudsen Lab: Utilizing machine learning to process 1.04 billion prescription data to understand the impact of drugs on human lifespan.
Fang Lab: Combining AI technology and wet lab validation platforms to identify new mitochondrial autophagy activating candidate drugs 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, providing scientific basis for personalized aging management.
GERO: Utilizing physics and AI to understand the aging process and create pipelines for candidate drugs and therapies targeting various age-related chronic diseases to slow aging.
Oisín Biotechnologies: Developing gene therapies to combat sarcopenia and other age-related diseases, with product lines including therapies to stimulate muscle growth, selectively destroy fat cells, and eliminate senescent cells. Oisín Biotechnologies also completed a $15 million Series A financing round in July 2024, led by AbbVie Ventures, the investment arm of the American pharmaceutical giant AbbVie, with funds primarily used for research on eliminating unwanted fat cells and enhancing muscle quality.
VitaDAO has released its governance token VITA three years ago, and the current market capitalization 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-NFT worth $38 million. Moreover, VitaDAO will also receive 21 million BIO tokens through Bio Protocol's bio/acc reward program. BIO Protocol has completed its initial token issuance, and founder Paul Kohlhaas stated that BIO's Launchpad and token transfer features will be launched in early Q1 next year.
VitaDAO has also collaborated with the Viktor Korolchuk Lab at Newcastle University to launch the VITA-FAST token. The Viktor Korolchuk Lab team is dedicated to identifying compounds that may initiate autophagy and rejuvenate aging cells. The VITA-FAST token sale ended last year with a 1700% oversubscription, and it has recently increased sixfold in the last week, reaching a market capitalization of $23 million. The VITA-FAST was created through a vote by VITA token holders, and it is officially regarded as the first longevity IPT realized through tokenizing Korolchuk IP-NFT on Molecule.
When talking about IP-NFT, one cannot help but mention Molecule's Catalyst platform, which realizes democratic funding and IP tokenization through IP-NFT and IP Token (IPT). Here, research and development projects can bundle their potential intellectual property into an IP-NFT and tokenize the IP-NFT into IP tokens (the governance token of IP-NFT), which can then be decentralized directly to individuals (IP token holders) to raise funds, thereby achieving partial governance of the IP.
Additionally, the VitaRNA/Artan Bio team, initially funded by VitaDAO ($91,000), recently identified and validated two promising leading candidates from the preliminary screening of 15 candidate oligonucleotides. They have also established a manufacturing partnership with the biotechnology multinational Lonza to ensure that VitaRNA's main candidate drug ARTAN-102 will be produced according to industry standards for preclinical and clinical research. VitaRNA/Artan Bio previously raised $300,000 through IP-NFT tokenization and will have its next round of sales in Q1 2025.
Regarding recent progress, on October 17, VitaDAO launched the internal interdisciplinary scientist network VitaLabs, aimed at developing aging research internally and enhancing democratic ownership of intellectual property through intellectual property tokens (IPT). Specifically, VitaLabs will form interdisciplinary teams during each four-month window to discover ideas, conduct experiments, and regularly update data, with successful projects advancing to in-depth research and potential derivative creations. VitaDAO has also launched the VitaLabs Fellowship Program to attract talent to participate in longevity research.
During Devcon, VitaDAO also showcased its first longevity product VD001, which is 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 fully comprehensive. Given the complexity and long-term nature of the field of anti-aging and longevity research, although it faces skepticism from some community users, most people firmly believe that through the power of technology, humanity may not reverse natural laws but is moving towards a healthier and more vibrant future.