Pfizer Ventures applies to community-owned collective’s Institutional Genesis Raise, proposing $500K investment and participation in governance of VitaDAO using $VITA tokens.
Pharma giant Pfizer is flexing in the direction of longevity with a new collaboration; for a $500,000 investment, the company will receive $VITA tokens and governance – the ability to participate in the decision-making process – assuming the community accepts them.
Longevity.Technology: VitaDAO is a DAO collective for community-governed and decentralised drug development. Its core mission is the acceleration of research and development (R&D) in the longevity space and the extension of human life and healthspan. To achieve this, VitaDAO collectively funds and digitises research in the form of IP-NFTs.
VitaDAO is an open cooperative that anyone can join – its goal is to acquire, support and finance new therapeutics and research data in the longevity space, and the VitaDAO collective co-develops IP with researchers, growing a portfolio of assets, which are represented by tokens.
In an Expression of Interest, Pfizer confirmed it is interested in developing therapeutics and enabling platform technologies related to human longevity.
“The field of longevity is currently at a pivotal moment in history, with advances in novel scientific discovery, increasing patient need, and dynamic business opportunities growing at an unprecedented rate,” said Pfizer representatives Michael Baran, PhD, MBA (Executive Director and Partner, Pfizer Ventures) and Linda Lohr, PhD (Senior Director, Head of Early-Stage External Scientific Networks).
Pfizer went on to explain that combining these factors generates an enormous opportunity to significantly increase human health and quality of life by supporting the most promising advances of scientific research across a host of age-related diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and cardiomyopathy.
Baran and Lohr explained in the Expression of Interest that Pfizer sees VitaDAO as pioneering a potentially transformative model for executing science. The pharma giant views this relationship as a mutually beneficial opportunity to synergise with efforts toward democratising longevity scientific development, with the ultimate goal of bringing treatments to patients.
“Many of the associated underlying mechanisms – both of longevity and of healthy aging – are aligned with Pfizer’s current prioritized research areas of focus, including Oncology (senescence), I&I (inflammation and immunology including fibrosis), Rare Neuromuscular diseases (autophagy), Internal Medicine (cardiomyopathy), and more,” added the EOI.
“Pfizer has an industry-leading track record of successfully developing emerging science in these areas into marketable assets that address unmet patient needs [1].”
As well as research and scientific diligence, Pfizer hopes to bring “promising dealflow” to the table.
“This includes potentially catalyzing interactions with tech transfer offices around the globe,” explained the spokespersons, adding that there is also the potential for dealflow to come from Pfizer’s internal research teams.
Partnerships to advance biotech and longevity are becoming more common; just last week we reported that California-based BioAge Labs has with diagnostics company Age Labs to decipher healthy longevity – something they plan to do by analysing samples and data from the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study biobank.
[1] https://gov.vitadao.com/t/vdp-54-1-expression-of-interest-pfizer-ventures/832
