Biomedical and scientific companies are turning to blockchain technology and crypto-treasury strategies to fund research, rethinking traditional capital formation and research funding structures that can delay life-saving cures for decades.
Portage Biotech, a biomedical technology company, became a Toncoin (TON) treasury company in September, earning operating income from investments in network security and investments in Telegram ecosystem projects, including games and mini-apps.
The company will direct a portion of the proceeds from TON’s operations and capital raising to fund cancer research, AlphaTON CEO Brittany Kaiser told Cointelegraph.
She said the company is exploring real-world asset (RWA) tokenization as an alternative funding mechanism to decentralize scientific development and remove financial and access barriers to research funding inherent in the traditional system. She said:
“We’re doing research on the best case studies and what’s worked and what hasn’t, from tokenizing intellectual property, to tokenizing the equity of the company that owns the research, to tokenizing future profits from the research.”
Kaiser and Anthony Scaramucci, AlphaTON’s strategic advisor, said biomedical research as an operating vertical sets the company apart from other digital asset troves, which often lack operational businesses.
“Most cryptocurrency treasury companies take the shell and eliminate the primary aspects of the original business, but this is a new case because there is a very valuable asset in the shell,” Scaramucci told Cointelegraph.
Related: BNB’s race for treasuries accelerates as Applied DNA, CEA Industries widen stakes
Ideosphere wants to fund scientific research through a prediction market
Ideosphere, a decentralized science startup, is exploring funding early-stage scientific research through a prediction market. Market prediction platforms act as information gathering and voting mechanisms.
“If you can create prediction markets around early-stage research, you can make those markets a market for ideas that will actually make money,” Ideospehre co-founder and chief technology officer Rei Jarram told Cointelegraph.
“Researchers can present the hypotheses they’re working on, and traders can speculate on it, and the spread goes to the researcher,” she added.
Bio Protocol provides funding from Animoca Brands
In September, Bio Protocol, a decentralized science platform that combines artificial intelligence, blockchain and community participation in drug discovery research, secured $6.9 million in funding from Web3’s Animoca Brands and Maelstrom Fund.
Maelstrom founder Arthur Hayes he said the platform has the potential to become a full-fledged “natural AI research marketplace” that can change the way scientific research is conducted.
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