Biomedical and science companies are turning to blockchain technology and cryptocurrency strategies to fund research, overhauling conventional capital-raising and research-financing structures that can delay the discovery of life-saving drugs by decades.
Biomedical technology company Portage Biotech converted to treasury company Toncoin (TON) in September, raising operating revenues from staking to secure the network and invest in Telegram ecosystem projects, including games and mini-apps.
The company will exploit a portion of revenues generated from operations and TON’s capital appreciation to fund cancer research, AlphaTON CEO Brittany Kaiser told Cointelegraph.
She said the company is exploring real-world asset (RWA) tokenization as an alternative financing mechanism that decentralizes scientific development and removes financial and access barriers to research funding inherent in the conventional system. She said:
“We research the best case studies and see what works and what doesn’t, from tokenizing intellectual property, to tokenizing the equity of the company that owns the study, to tokenizing future research profits.”
Kaiser and Anthony Scaramucci, strategic advisor to AlphaTON, said biomedical research as an operating vertical sets the company apart from other digital asset vaults that often lack operating businesses.
“Most cryptocurrency vault companies take over the shell and eliminate core aspects of the original business, but this is a new case because there are very valuable assets in the shell,” Scaramucci told Cointelegraph.
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Ideosphere wants to finance scientific research through prediction markets
Ideosphere, a decentralized science startup, is considering financing early-stage research through prediction markets. Forecast market platforms act as crowdsourced intelligence and voting mechanisms.
“If you can create prediction markets based on early-stage research, you can turn those markets into a marketplace of ideas that will actually make money,” Ideospehre co-founder and chief technology officer Rei Jarram told Cointelegraph.
“Researchers can put forward the hypotheses they are working on, and investors can speculate on that, and the spread goes to the researcher,” she added.
Bio Protocol secures financing from Animoca Brands
In September, Bio Protocol, a decentralized science platform combining artificial intelligence, blockchain and community participation in drug discovery research, secured $6.9 million in funding from Web3 Animoca Brands and the Maelstrom Fund.
Maelstrom founder Arthur Hayes he said the platform has the potential to become a full-fledged “AI-native research marketplace” that could transform the way scientific research is conducted.
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