Molecule’s story starts with patients and researchers. We imagine a world where patients directly fund researchers developing the next therapeutic breakthrough they need. A world where accessible, innovative therapeutics are created through collaborative drug development and fuelled by early R&D funding - we are building the frameworks and platform to do exactly this.
Molecule was conceptualised in 2018 by Paul Kohlhaas and Tyler Golato. They were connected through a mutual friend in South Africa and began riffing on how they could disrupt drug development by creating novel incentives to share IP. Their backgrounds were a natural fit for what came next.
Paul became interested in biohacking in high school and joined a lot of online open source pharma communities such as open insulin and open cancer research. He then went on to study economics in Switzerland and during that time he started trading biotech stocks. He was an early adopter of Ethereum and that led him to become Director of Business Development at ConsenSys and uPort where he did a lot of work on digital identity and data marketplaces. This, along with a profound passion for pharmaceutical economics and open source utility networks led him to ask the question what if pharma worked more like an open source marketplace as opposed to the industry that we know.
Tyler is a biogerontologist and aging researcher who started out his career wanting to be a physician. He had a strong interest in cancer early on in his career because of touch points with his family. While he was studying he began really looking into oncology and ****after graduating he joined an experimental therapeutic fellowship at Columbia University where he was working to develop therapeutics for various types of cancer. As Tyler saw a lack of autonomy that many physicians have and some of the struggles that existed to treat patients he became increasingly interested in the research component - an opportunity for him to be a researcher and push the field forward.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBDBGZoAFzo&t=38s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcFckCGM-Qg
Researchers often spend about 40% or more of their time trying to secure funding to keep their research projects alive. Time spent trying to secure funding means less time in the lab running experiments. Promising therapeutics may never see the light of day due to the administrative overload of grant writing and lack of collaboration with potential stakeholders who are interested in these therapeutics. The result is a “Valley of Death” where many good biomedical ideas wither away and die. Promising early-stage biopharma projects are discontinued and the early stage development cycle essentially halted. Lack of visibility and connection to relevant investors, the legal complexity of IP deals or the difficulty determining the value of early-stage biopharma assets all contribute to this Valley of Death. More on that here.
The Valley of Death visualized
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXFkNbF3YGk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiye3owivAg
Molecule's Biopharma IP-NFTs - A Technical Description
Decentralized investor communities gain traction in biotech - Nature Biotechnology