VitaDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization that sponsors research projects in the field of longevity science, has completed a $4.1 million fundraising round.
According to a news statement, Pfizer’s venture arm, VitaDAO participated in the token round alongside Shine Capital, L1 Digital, and Balaji Srinivasan, among others. According to Ion, the round ended this month.
According to VitaDAO’s so-called dealflow steward Laurence Ion in an interview, this is Pfizer’s first investment in the web3 space. He said that the company, which owns vita governance tokens through a special purpose organization, has even participated in governance initiatives. The financial round comes on the heels of Pfizer’s previously disclosed $500,000 commitment to VitaDAO.
VitaDAO is part of the emerging decentralized scientific movement (DeSci). In contrast to the current science ecosystem, which is based on centralized bodies of research and finance, DeSci aspires to source research funds through crowdsourcing and decentralised ownership.
“DeSci is just a way to bottom-up design better science without all the centralization and bogged-down control of governments and big institutions,” Ion explained.
Traditional equity or non-fungible tokens meant to represent intellectual property are used to fund projects. These rely on technology from Molecule, a closely related project that allows academics to list NFT projects on its marketplace. Molecule raised $13 million in seed funding in June of last year.
VitaDAO-funded initiatives are largely concerned with longevity and the ageing process. It has invested in Turn Biotechnologies, a Stanford University spinoff that develops mRNA therapies, as well as a University of Copenhagen study to better understand the influence of pharmaceuticals on the ageing process.
The investment will be used to further fund longevity research projects and biotech firms that will spin out of the DAO in the coming year.
