Anti-aging is feasible, immortality is a dream.

Written by: 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 its frequent mentions at Devcon, leading to a sharp increase in interest. The biological experimental tokens RIF and URO on pump.science have even seen a thousandfold increase. 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, initiated in July 2021. Its goal is to drive scientific innovation through the collective power of the community, researching and supporting projects aimed at extending human lifespan and preventing age-related diseases.

In January 2023, VitaDAO completed a funding round of $4.1 million, with strategic investors including Pfizer Ventures (the venture capital arm of "Cosmos Pharmaceuticals" Pfizer), Shine Capital, L1 Digital, and 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 already invested $500,000 in VitaDAO to accelerate 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 participate in various other ways, including transaction processes, scientific evaluations, 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 DeSci projects Molecule and BIO Protocol, and has previously worked at Consensys. Tyler Golato is also a co-founder of VitaDAO, Molecule, and BIO Protocol (in a subsequent series of articles, the author will introduce the Molecule project separately).

What progress has VitaDAO made?

According to the latest data on the VitaDAO official website, VitaDAO has deployed $4.2 million in funding to date, supporting 24 projects. From the following funded projects, we can feel VitaDAO's extensive layout in promoting longevity research.

• Matrix Bio: Researching the anti-cancer and longevity effects on humans using high molecular weight hyaluronic acid from naked mole rats, 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 raising funds 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 lifespan;
• Fang Lab: Combining AI technology and wet lab validation platforms to identify new candidate drugs that activate mitochondrial autophagy for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease;
• An Lab: Focusing on reversing periodontitis;
• Humanity: This project connects wearable devices to monitor digital biomarkers to quantify aging scores, providing a scientific basis for personalized aging management;
• GERO: Using physics and AI to understand the aging process and create pipelines for candidate drugs and therapies targeting various age-related chronic diseases to slow down aging;
• Oisín Biotechnologies: Developing gene therapies to combat sarcopenia and other age-related diseases, with a product line that includes therapies to stimulate muscle growth, selectively destroy fat cells, and eliminate senescent cells. Oisín Biotechnologies also completed a $15 million Series A financing in July 2024, led by AbbVie Ventures, the investment arm of the American pharmaceutical giant AbbVie, with the funds primarily used for research on eliminating unwanted fat cells and enhancing muscle quality.

VitaDAO released its governance token VITA three years ago, and the current market capitalization of VITA is $130 million. It is worth noting 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 valued at $38 million. Additionally, VitaDAO will also receive 21 million BIO tokens through the Bio Protocol's bio/acc reward program. BIO Protocol has completed its initial token issuance, and founder Paul Kohlhaas stated that the BIO Launchpad and token transfer functions will be launched in the first quarter of next year.

VitaDAO has also collaborated with the Viktor Korolchuk Lab at Newcastle University to launch the VITA-FAST token, with the Viktor Korolchuk Lab team dedicated to identifying compounds that may initiate autophagy and rejuvenate senescent cells. The VITA-FAST token sale ended last year with a 1700% oversubscription and recently increased sixfold in the past week, reaching a market capitalization of $23 million. VITA-FAST was created through a vote by VITA token holders, and it is officially recognized as the first longevity IPT realized through tokenizing Korolchuk IP-NFT on Molecule.

Speaking of IP-NFT, one cannot overlook Molecule's Catalyst platform, which democratizes funding and IP tokenization through IP-NFT and IP Token (IPT). In this model, R&D projects can bundle their potential intellectual property into an IP-NFT and tokenize the IP-NFT into IP tokens (the governance tokens of IP-NFT), which can then be decentralized directly to individuals (IP token holders) to raise funds, thus achieving partial governance of the IP.

Additionally, the VitaRNA/Artan Bio team, initially funded by VitaDAO ($91,000), recently successfully identified and validated two promising leading candidates from a preliminary screening of 15 candidate oligonucleotides and has reached a manufacturing partnership with the multinational biotechnology company 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 the first quarter of 2025.

In terms of recent progress, on October 17, VitaDAO launched the internal interdisciplinary scientist network VitaLabs, aimed at internally developing aging research and enhancing the democratic ownership of intellectual property through intellectual property tokens (IPT). Specifically, VitaLabs will form interdisciplinary teams during each four-month window to discover ideas and conduct experiments, as well as regularly update data, with successful projects advancing to in-depth research and potential derivative creation. 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, a high-dose spermidine supplement approved by the Thai Food and Drug Administration.

The dynamic progress of VitaDAO and its funded projects mentioned in this article may not be fully covered. Given the complexity and long-term nature of the field of anti-aging and longevity research, despite facing skepticism from some community users, most people firmly believe that through the power of technology, while humanity may not reverse the laws of nature, we are moving towards a healthier and more vibrant future.

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