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Rosie Perper
Rosie Perper is the Deputy Managing Editor for the Web3 news section, focusing on the metaverse, NFTs, DAOs and emerging technology like VR/AR. Prior to that, she worked in media, global finance, technology, culture and business. It holds a few btc and eth and several nfts.
VitaDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) focused on raising funds for research on extending human life, has closed a $4.1 million funding round with Pfizer Ventures and several others.
VitaDAO was started in 2021 by Tyler Golato of decentralized biotech protocol Molecule to fund longevity research. Organization-related, he brags about a community of more than 9,000 "amateurs, Researchers and Collaborators", and has invested more than $3.5 million in research projects on aging-related illnesses, Cell Biology and Age-Related Bodily Injury Reparation in 2022.
The latest funding round includes pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Ventures; venture fund Shine Capital; investment group L1 Digital; decentralized science organizations BeakerDAO and Spaceship DAO; and longevity enthusiasts including former chief technology officer Balaji Srinivasan and Retro Biosciences Joe Betts-LaCroix. Previous investors include Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
According to VitaDAO, Pfizer is the first pharmaceutical company to vote on DAO proposals and to help incubate and market VitaDAO projects.
Revenues from the final round will support longevity research projects and the construction of the first vitadao biotechnology company, expected to be announced in the first quarter of 2023. In addition, the group plans to invest further in the "commercialization and licensing" of its non-fungible token () intellectual property (IP) through its partnership with Molecule.
VitaDAO's dealflow steward Laurence Ion said that several projects funded by VitaDAO have moved to the next stages of development, including clinical trials with Mantis Photonics, which seeks to diagnose Alzheimer's Disease through retinal imaging.
"There's a move away in medicine to solve the symptoms of aging," said Todd White, operations steward at VitaDAO. 'There is much talk of 'is ageing an illness? ' Many people now agree that aging and many of the diseases associated with aging can be addressed."
The group is governed by its native VITA token and holders can vote on which projects should be supported, whereas a group of "intendants" contributes to "facilitating" the implementation of these proposals, said White.
Ion told CoinDesk that with its democratic governance structure, the group aims to move beyond physical locations and is thinking about "a potential future sovereignty network."
"I believe we must have a new paradigm," he said. We want to be as large a community as some nations and as resourceful as some nations."
Cryptography lovers have long been in the science of longevity and slowing down human aging. COINBASE CEO Brian Armstrong funded a company called NewLimit in Dec. 2021 to "cure aging," while former Ripple chief technology officer and current Stellar co-founder Jed McCaleb founded the Astera Institute to fund longevity studies.
White says the overlap between the crypto industry and the area of longevity research is not a coincidence. 'If you think about how cryptography started, it was about breaking down barriers and repairing a system they perceived to have been broken. Longevity is no different."
"There's a lot more innovation and a lot more excitement about trying new things from the crypto community," he added.
