DappCon 2023: Building A BioDAO In The Women's Health Space - Inês Santos Silva

Transcript

my name is in shilva I'm one of the co-initiators and W the Ops leads the Tina da and and basically our Focus has been around how can we really change uh the Women's Health landscape I will tell you a little bit about the problems so why we actually decided to uh take this path what we are doing and yeah and maybe ways for for you to get involved so the first one is like what we are saying so we are uh we want to be the leading decentralized Community Focus on translational women's health research education and funding and everything started because um if you are a woman you probably know that um sometimes you go to the doctor and they have no answer for you uh sometimes a lot of the times you realize that you are quite alone in

um in in sharing some of the the the issues you you have been going through and you find that weird right so every week I have conversations with women basically all around the world that tell me sometimes with tears in their eyes like how alone they feel uh because they they go they go to the doctor they basically they go to the health system and for some for some reason there's like no an for some of the issues they have and um and this is just show shows part of the problem right so if you look at the NIH budget a very small percentage goes to Women's Health funding and this has many reasons part of them is because for a long the longest time we look at women as smaller versions of men's bodies H and we we thought like ah maybe we don't need to

study women's specific conditions we just need to study uh men in general but also this goes beyond like women specific conditions so if you look at for example cardiovascular disease two-thirds of the patients are women uh usually we actually not know know that but if you look at the clinical trials and a lot of the research done in this space most of the times women are not either present or if they are it's just in a very small percentage so we know very little about um for the cardiovascular disease in women and for example if you go to the to the doctor with um a heart attack symtom if it's a female doctor the your chance of survival increase 70% so this just shows like the lack of information the lack of

um of research there there is in this space this is another interesting graph this is actually focused on longevity and as you can see um there's like more funding going to pets longevity that reproductive Health longevity and again just shows like how a lot of the times uh women are or women health research is actually overlooked and underfunded but and a lot of the times like of course like I'm I'm mentioning like the problem but this is also a big opportunity right so the New York Times published this amazing article I think last year about menopause and how this is like a 600 billion doll opportunity 10% of the women have um endometriosis 10% of the women around the world have

end have PCOS and there is no Solutions it takes a lot of the times like s to 10 years to get a diagnose um and then in the end uh they say like I I just have to deal with it so there's like a big opportunity here this is a big Market there's a big opportunity here but for many reasons we are not seeing the research going into this direction and then the fact that there's a lack of research means that in the end like there are like no treatments no no diagnosis and there's like a big myth there and that's where we come in right so last year uh actually here in Berlin a group of us we went to the C Berlin we came together in in a room and we realized that there's like a lot of

areas in research that are overlooked and underfunded and women's health research is one of the main ones we realize that maybe using the biomodel the bod Dow model where as a we organize as a basically as a DA and as a biotech da and we are able to address some of these uh this uh F these problems um would be a good way for us to do to do that so in our how we basically we we bring together researchers women community in general funders uh Advocates and so on people that have a are aligned with our mission of uh changing the landscape of women's health and really want to make sure that we get we we basically give more support to research in this field and in the end uh

the overall goal is to really make sure that we get more more as I was saying better diagnos and better treatments so what have what have we done in the last few uh few uh few months so we launched so we started by launching a call for applications for a varing a varing aging so we got 50 applications from all around the world from some of the best universities around the world um and we basically we did we like we we look at the submissions we found like a lot of great a great um a lot of great um research and we were able to fund the first one and we have two other in pipelines so basically what we are doing is US using IPA nfts um to um to basically to put on Shain the research uh agreement that we

are doing with universities and research labs around the world we were also able to raise and this actually closed last week we were also a able to raise through a a auction 360,000 usdc so basically to direct to to our mission we are also like right now we have a call for submissions for indom materialis and PCOS we really already got a lot of applications we'll be going basically evaluating them over the next few months and then uh hopefully we'll be able to fund some of them um and and support this research uh to one day hopefully to get to Market and how we got here I think part of our mission is not as I was mentioned not only to support research in women's

health space but also onboard more women into the space if you go around this conference you don't see uh a lot of women uh here unfortunately um and what we have been doing is is through education office hours info sessions community events in person and online we have been onboarding a lot of women into uh into the space um and we were super excited to see like the their support during our auction but more more than that U their their day-to-day support as contributors as enthusiasts for um for women's health research and for what we are doing uh in web Tre we also have like a lot like something that we also have been doing a

lot is also basically working with organizations that are already in space shifi Boys Club BFF and other organizations that has as mission on board women into web tree and we have been basically also working with them and be a bridge for for this uh for these organizations to decentralized science right um decentralized science is still a quite small and New Movement fortunately is growing uh quite a lot there are like more biod in the space but but not only that other basically other organizations try or trying to really focus on the some of the challenges of Science and what we trying to do is like be a bridge to these organizations it's very interesting to see that a lot of women come to us and

say like ah I look at atina da and look at atina da as the way for them to stay wi web tree there's like some people are a little bit tired with some of the things that are happening in defi for example but we are but they are looking at decentralized science and and out specifically as a way for them to stay engaged with web 3 and stay interested in um in basically in doing work in this area we also already published two public goods with the help of of gitcoin Grant so the first reproductive Health Report focus on aaring Aging that was published last year in December and the second one um that was published this year about IND materiales and PCOS I think if you look at the branding and like our like our the way we actually

communicate a in um we we tried to make sure that it's like very let's call it consumer friendly right so we wanted to make sure that women could look at what we are doing and actually engage and be interested in what we are doing and stay a little bit away of some of some of some of the the ways web three sometimes communicates to to this audience because it's like it's not appealing um to women so we wanted to make sure and we were very inspired actually by fashion and Beauty Industries um that have a very good way of communicating with women and wanted to make sure that we could replicate that so it was very intention of in our case to really create a brand in as a basically a bod with a a strong

brand on um that that could appeal to to women we also published our uh uh white paper um where we share like a little bit more about the problem of the of women's health research but also like what's coming next for us right so what's like what's the what what we want want or what our community wants uh to happen in the next few months and years um we know like this is a multi multi-year Pro uh project or Challenge and and but you I also know that in 10 years I want the conversations to be different right I don't want to be talking about the same problems the same um the same challenges that women face today uh hopefully we'll have solve some of them H and we'll be able to focus on

specific areas that still probably will need um support but but basically those will be different so far what we have done is like as I was mentioning like we were able to to have like one ipft focused on the aaring Aging we have out of the 50 applications that we got we have like six High Caliber Caliber projects um that went through senior review and then right now are we basically are developing agreements with tech transfer offices or universities we we have 35 active contributors more than 5,000 members and we have done I think we we put here 30 but I'm sure it's like more than 30 um talks uh events right now we

actually have a series of uh breakfast aadal breakfast all around the world um I think we had one yesterday in Singapore two days ago we had one uh in Nigeria and next week we'll have one in Lisbon and another one in Nairobi so we really want to make sure that the ow Community is global and we are engaging men and women um that want to to to to join our community as I was mentioned we started with a varing aging um we are now focusing on inalis at PCOS we decided to because like women's health is such a big area we decided to be every quarter to to focus on a specific area we started with aing aging now inom materialis and PCOS and um in the next

quarter we'll be Focus focusing on um rare cancers so what we want to make sure is that we are able to bring in the best researchers the best projects from research project from around the world we are able to bring also the best evaluators possible to really um make sure that we add we are able to evaluate the project but also we add value to the to to the researchers we are working with as I was mentioned we have this is our first um ipft uh with Dr Mario Cordo based in Spain uh focusing on our varing aging we have another another two coming up uh this is from the from a university in the US um also with a a different

Focus but also with the the in the area of of varing aging and the last one is another one another project this from Singapore from the Brian Kennedy lab uh one of like the leading researchers in this space and L dong is um a PhD student with a very interesting um project that we'll be able to fund uh until the end of the year in terms of core team right so we have we are four people some of us with experience with tech transfer or uh support to entrepreneurs some others with experience more like on The Branding fashion and building consumer goods and then we have of course like Maria and Stefan like scientists phds with a very um a very deep knowledge on

the area of uh of women's health but of course our community is bigger than that we have um science contributors we have legal uh web tree R and D so we bring a like a very group a diverse group of of of people from all around the world different expertises are able to add value to the to the Dow our supporters I won't go through them but I think most of the what I want to make sure is like of course like for us is still day one right so we just even though uh atina was launched a year ago uh August last year um we have been like building this community of people that are engaged and interested in women's health he we know that the opportunity is there because not only because of the the the research

uh project that we are receiving because but also because of the the people that want to contribute to the to our mission so that has been super super exciting but we we want to make sure that uh we can build from here and also we believe that our Focus going forward won't will won't be only focus on supporting research but also building from there we are we are not 100% sure what that that will be right now we are actually exploring different ways and engaging different uh people and expert experts to really understand like where a Tina da can go from here but there's like really we really believe that world is oyster and there's a lot that we can do to support Women's

Health as I was mentioned still day one so feel free to engage with us join our Discord and uh yeah and now I'm happy to answer any questions thank you very much thank you so much Ines so the floor is open for questions anyone uh yeah I just had questions on how do you like make it so that research in these normal institutions are there's still like some selection process it's not just about getting the funding for it's like who's allowed to make decisions on what can be researched and there's obviously like this systemic

patriarchy stuff so how are you making sure that um Women's Health actually gets researched here besides just the funding aspects Yeah so basically what we are doing is to really reaching out to research centers all all around the world that we know that are focusing in this area and we are incentivizing them to apply to our res to basically our call for submissions we also make sure that our um our form for submissions is actually like it's simple to to to to um to fill in is like very straightforward we are asking the question that you really need to to know and then we also make sure that we have a group of of um of people that have a lot of experience that have no conflicts of interest and

are able to get basically evaluate to research the best way possible we are not telling them what to research on um basically we are asking we are just have like looking around the world and trying to see who is researching on what of course we are we are doing that with a with a Focus right so we started with varing aging um we are now focusing on endom material and PCOS so we can close a little bit the scope um but I I'm I'm sure like going forward there will other ways for us to do this right so I will I I'm sure that going forward we'll be able to see like what is the white space where can how can we make sure that we map the landscape of women's health research and we are able to see in the white space and go and being a little

bit like and and understand like better who who can research those those white spaces but right now what we are trying trying to do is just make sure that we have we act we get to as much researchers as possible from all around the world and we are able to then go go through a process of evaluation of of that research someone had a question over here are was same question okay so it's been already answered anyone else in that case thank you once morees thank you very much