One biotech startup is trying to use blockchain technology to revolutionize the way potential treatments for rare diseases are identified for funding and development.

According to Vibe Bio CEO Alok Tayi:

“Vibe is a community of patients, scientists and partners that help identify promising treatments for rare diseases and other overlooked diseases, and fund them in innovative ways.”

In this episode of The Scoop, Tayi shares his vision for how Vibe Bio aims to disrupt the centralized control of big pharma, and explains why a decentralized autonomous organization (or ‘DAO’) is the optimal solution for organizing the members of the Vibe community.

According to Tayi, the biology of rare diseases is often understood, but biotech companies do not have enough incentive to fund research given the limited financial upside. As Tayi notes:

“There actually ends up being a myriad of different candidate medicines with promise that are sitting on shelves today, but simply lack the capital and the focus to be able to develop them.”

This is the problem Tayi hopes to address through Vibe Bio. By using a DAO structure, Vibe Bio is able to put forward governance proposals to identify promising treatment options. $VIBE token holders can then vote on which treatments will get funded via the proceeds of the DAO's token sale.

As Tayi explains, this decentralized approach empowers patients who would otherwise be unable to get assistance from centralized biotech companies:

“When you start to move away from a traditional sort of financing model to one that's community led, patients can now be in the driver's seat of deciding what medicines to pursue, what disease areas we should try to treat, not profit or politics.”

Earlier this week, Vibe announced it received $12 million in a funding round led by Initialized Capital, which also included participation from prominent angel investors Naval Ravikant and Balaji Srinivasan, as well as 6th Man Ventures — the venture firm helmed by The Block Co-Founder Mike Dudas — amongst others.

Episode 58 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Alok Tayi, Co-Founder & CEO of Vibe Bio.

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