Of course, we can’t talk about DeSci.Berlin without highlighting the unveiling of our latest product—Catalyst. In case you missed our announcement, Catalyst is a platform designed to revolutionize the funding and governance of early-stage research. It operates like the Kickstarter of science, enabling funders to contribute crypto directly to research projects and govern the resulting IP, fostering meaningful connections between researchers and funders.
As we prepare for Catalyst’s beta launch, we invite you to join us on this journey and be among the first to experience the future of research funding and project governance. Secure your spot on the early access list today!
Julia Zhao from Nucleate - “Empowering Biotech Leaders: From Academic Science to Accelerated Startups”
Nucleate’s Global Director of Activator Operations, Julia Zhao, presented how biotech leaders can better transition from academic science to founding and scaling startups. She highlighted Nucleate’s flagship program, Activator, which facilitates company formation in the life sciences through a structured matching process and curriculum. Through this program, Nucleate provides mentorship, expert workshops, and industry connections to help teams develop their projects.What stuck out for us was Julia’s focus on the importance of community and open access to biotech education. She says, “Nucleate is currently aiming to be the world's largest educational organization for functional and impact-driven life science career development programs.” For more information about the Nucleate x Molecule partnership, you can read the full press release here.
Vincent Weisser - “Scientific Progress Through Decentralized AI”
Vincent Weisser recently honed his focus on democratizing AI at scale by founding . Their platform simplifies finding global compute resources and training state-of-the-art models through distributed training across clusters. AI will increasingly drive and accelerate scientific progress, and Vincent understands the necessity of decentralization.
About the author
Cameron Stow
Social and Get-to-Market for Perplexity. Prev. Marketing Manager at Molecule.
With the growing capabilities of large language models (LLMs) and AI agents, we can expect remarkable advancements in technology and science, and better access to scaled compute is crucial as this happens.
Vincent reiterated DeSci's role in this: design ecosystems that provide necessary rewards/incentives and build bioDAOs that can allocate capital for compute resources.
Jurij Skornik & Charlie Edwards - DeSci on Decentralized Knowledge Graphs with Origin Trail
The last three major knowledge revolutions were the printing press, the internet, and now AI. According to Jurij, the future of AI will be unlocked through what he calls the “Verifiable Internet for AI,” a combination of crypto, the internet, and AI that ensures the provenance, ownership, and integrity of information. By integrating Decentralized Knowledge Graphs (DKGs) and “Knowledge Assets” using the Origin Trail framework, we can obtain much more reliable outputs from AI. These Knowledge Assets can be grouped into knowledge bundles called “Paranets,” which can then be mined and monetized, incentivizing participation from knowledge miners.
Charlie, from ID Theory, shared with us their plan to invest in building a DeSci Paranet to create a “ground truth layer for autonomous research and decentralized scientific advancement.” - if you’re a builder in this space, be sure to drop them a message!
To learn more about Origin Trail, visit their website or check out their latest tool, ChatDKG.
Ethan Perlstein - “Scientific Progress Through Decentralized AI”
Ethan Perlstein is a vision-driven man, determined to help families abandoned by traditional healthcare. He spoke to us about his company Perlara, the world's first biotech public benefit corporation. Perlara collaborates directly with motivated families to develop treatments and cures for rare genetic diseases, operating as a decentralized, patient-driven biotech company. Ethan thinks that Web3 technologies have the potential to scale the patient-driven biotech model, ensuring economic fairness and proper compensation for families’ contributions. We agree!
"Pharma is too big to scale down to this problem... I'd love a world where families are not just expected to sit down and wait for medicine to show up. They should be rewarded for their contributions to drug development, potentially through a value-added royalty system on-chain."
Day 2
Lou de Kerhuelvez - Opportunities for DeSci in the Contect of Emerging Network Sovereigns
Lou de Kerhuelvez, Program Director at Foresight Institute, introduced the audience to new governance models called “Network Sovereignties.” New opportunities for coordination and governance are now possible with advancements in communication tools, collaboration, and technologies like blockchain, smart contracts, zero-knowledge proofs, and voting mechanisms.
Lou spoke about the flaws in the current ideas of network states - these models often lack proper governance structures, are centralized, oligarchic, territory-based, and primarily rely on exit strategies. Her proposed solution is network sovereignties, which serve as new institutional structures for global cooperation. Examples of this approach already exist in Vitalia and Edge City. Click here to read more about network sovereignty or how to participate in ongoing initiatives.
How we can move from funding drug target studies to developing an actual candidate molecules within the DeSci framework? In traditional early-stage molecule discovery, it can cost millions of dollars just to identify a molecule which binds to a target. However, in DeSci, we are allocating only a fraction of that amount to current research initiatives. A major cost driver for these studies is laboratory expenses. So, how do we achieve the same quality of discovery with much less funding?
Lab.Bio offers a solution. By leveraging the latest advanced machine learning models, we can integrate laboratory simulation into the early discovery process. Users can run generative models and simulators to fast-track the discovery process, explore generated molecules, manage results, and retain ownership of their work. The Lab.Bio platform will be launching soon. For more information, visit LabDAO.
AminoChain - An Introduction to Decentralized Biobanking
AminoChain’s Founder and CEO, Casper Barnes, took the stage to announce the first decentralized biobank for enterprise healthcare institutions. Currently the process of donating bio-samples for scientific research is deeply flawed and fails to utilize the millions of unused samples across the US effectively. AminoChain aims to address the growing problem of misaligned incentives and mistrust in biomedical research with decentralized biobanking.With decentralized biobanking, leveraging AminoChain’s software, biobanks can operate as nodes within a network that fosters collaboration by sharing samples and licensing agreements transparently and securely, while involving patients in the process. AminoChain’s goal is to create the Amazon for bio-samples, transforming biobanks worldwide into “shoppable specimen center experiences.”
Pitch Competition with Nucleate Activator’s Program
As part of the Molecule X Nucleate partnership, we decided to sponsor a pitch competition for participants in Nucleate’s German Activator program. Four young companies took to the stage to present their innovative ideas to the audience, who then had the power to vote for their favorite project.
Fluvion
Fluvion’s advanced bioreactors are designed to efficiently scale and utilize secretory epithelial cells for various industrial applications. This technology enables the sustainable and economic production of biologic liquids such as milk, venoms, musk, silk, and complex pharmaceutical ingredients, all without the use of animals and without generating greenhouse gas emissions.
Jellyfish Bio
Jellyfish Bio is an AI platform for blood biomarker discovery. They leverage AI and continuous monitoring to create comprehensive, well-characterized individual patient profiles, addressing the heterogeneity of genetic diseases. By integrating genetics, wearable data, and blood biomarkers, they enable personalized treatment plans, drug repurposing analysis, and new outcome measures.
Silica Corpora
Silica Corpora is an AI-driven company specializing in the de novo design, optimization, and screening of antibodies. They focus on epitope-specific screening and are developing tools like Ep-Mapper for epitope mapping.
EscapeAgent
EscapeAgent revolutionizes gene therapy with a potent endosomal escape enhancer, tackling delivery inefficiencies. They hope to enable efficient gene therapy by reducing complexity by using a drug master file!
The winner? Silica Corpora, with their De Novo design of antibody therapeutics. We want to thank Nucleate and all the participants for their incredible work, and we look forward to seeing each project develop and thrive.
That’s all for now folks!
Thank you to all our speakers, participants, and attendees for making DeSci.Berlin an unforgettable event. For those that weren’t able to make it, we’re in the process of uploading all of the talk onto our Youtube page, so they may live on in our hearts, minds, and Youtube playlists forever. See you next year!
