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AthenaDAO and reproductive health research and funding
Recorded: July 27, 2022 Duration: 0:56:33Space Recording
Full Transcription
Hi, Ness, I just made you, I requested for you to, oh, you're a speaker now.
Hello, how are you, I, how do I, oh, I'm going to make you a co-host.
Perfect, thank you.
Hello, Sophie, thank you for joining us, we're just getting started as everybody else arrives
and we start our first community call.
I am going to tweet to say we are live.
Awesome, I'm going to invite Nicolina to speak and hopefully Isabel and Dee are going to join
us soon, Nina, I invited you to be a speaker, I don't know if you can see the invitation
or maybe you're driving, I know that you weren't traveling today, so maybe you're just listening
today, we'll just mention that you're here.
Here, oh, amazing, our friends from Web3 and Women in Science are here.
Sophie, we're going to make everybody a speaker eventually, we're just going to have, first
introduce the team, Isabel is here, Sandra is here, I'm inviting you to speak, thank you
everybody, we're going to get going very soon, Isabel, I don't know if you got the invite,
Nina, I send an invite, I'm not sure if you're able to speak.
Sophie, we'll bring you up in a second, we're just going to have the team introduce themselves
first and then we're going to let people have a chance to speak up as well.
Isabel, I want to point out that you can only speak if you're on your phone, if you're on
a desktop, you won't be able to access a microphone.
Oh, great, you are there, so Ines, I heard you, Sandra, Isabel and Mike and Nicolina, can
you guys on mic just to test microphones? Yeah, I think it's working. I'm mainly going
to be silent because I'm on curvy roads, so I do need to focus on the road. Yes, thank
you, no worries. Sandra, I heard you, Isabel? Hello, I'm here. Awesome, so we're just going
to wait for Dee in a couple more minutes. The good news is that we are recording this call,
so if people weren't able to join live, the recording is going to be available on Twitter
for 30 days and hopefully we're able to also put the call onto another file format. We're
waiting for Dee to join, so hopefully she'll be here soon and thank you everybody who's
here already. We really look forward to talking about reproductive health and our mission and
hope to have a lot of you hopefully join us. I'm not sure where Dee is, so I'm just going
to go ping her. Ines, I'm going to leave you. Oh, Dee joined, but I think I need to let her
know that she needs to join from a phone because from a date, it doesn't work.
Can you guys hear me? Yes, it's working. Okay, so while we wait for Dee to sort out her tech,
I just wanted to welcome everybody again. Thank you so much for being here. This conversation
is going to be 45 to 60 minutes and we are recording, so if you come to talk, remember
that your name is going to be used and you are allowing your voice to be in the recording.
We are going to do about 32 minutes introduction to reproductive health, our mission, the team,
and then we'll love for people to chime in. It is an open conversation and hopefully we will be able to
have a great first meeting. So with that said, I'm going to let the rest of the team introduce them
before we introduce Athena Dow. Well, we wait for Dee to sort out getting here, so I'll let Ines go first
and we'll go from top to bottom, left to right. Thank you so much. So I see Ines, Isabel, Sandra,
Nina might not be able to actually speak. If she can, she'll let us know and then in the meantime,
we'll sort out Dee joining the conversation. Ines, go ahead. Thank you. But Laura, you didn't
introduce yourself. Do you want to go ahead first? Yes, thank you. So my name is Laura Minkini. I am a
longevity advocate and listener. I think I know a lot of you from the decentralized science space and
obviously my longevity advocacy. I've been very involved with Vita Dow, a second contributor, and
I love there so much what they're doing that we decided to start this project, but that'll be a more
general introduction. So from there, I'll let Ines go over. Thanks. Thank you. So hello, everyone.
Super excited to be here. My name is Ines. I'm based in Portugal. And over the past 10 years, I have been
working in the diversity and inclusive space, launching projects like Portuguese Women in Tech
and Women.Business. However, the intersection between technology, science, diversity and inclusion
has been something that I've been very passionate about for many years. So I'm very excited to be here,
to be part of the Athena Dow team. And yeah, and to work on this, such an important mission. So
yeah, Isabel, next to you. Yeah, now it's you. Thanks, Ines. Hello, everyone. My name is Isabel,
Isabel Thompson. I'm head of product at Molecule, so very central in the central in the decentralized
science space. I've got a background in strategy product market research consulting. But specifically
for eight years, I've worked in the research software and scholarly publishing space.
So I have a very long history of working with researchers and all the problems that they
face and the difficulties getting funding, particularly for areas that don't necessarily
have the right focus or attention from institutions or even at a society level. And so Athena Dow is
important to me for reasons that we'll go into in more detail. But largely because there's such an
opportunity to make an enormous impact by channeling more attention and funds towards incredibly
impactful science.
Hi, everyone. I'm Sandra Almanza. And for the past five years, I've been in the academic space
with studying evolutionary biology. And I have a background in anthropology. And through my studies,
I found that there was just a huge lack of research funding. And I've encountered open source data that
had become I had encountered issues with open source data. And it was a serious blocker in my research.
And this really propelled me towards looking for different alternatives, especially in the Web3 space.
And that's when I started getting more involved within DSI. And just I'm really passionate about women's health issues,
just by being a part of different women's groups. I've seen that there's a serious lack of research
and attention towards a lot of women's reproductive health issues. And so I'm really happy to be here. And
thank you, Sandra. I'm not sure if Nina can join us. Maria is also here. I'm not I know that she's also
traveling. So they are going to be working with us. And hopefully on the next community call, they can
actually introduce themselves live. Dee is having an issue on being on her mobile web browser rather than the
app. So hopefully she'll download the app and be able to join us soon.
Why Athena Dow? So as my personal introduction, which I didn't speak about before, is from being involved in the
longevity space, I learned a lot about reproductive longevity. I was very inspired by the work that has been done with
by Dr. Jennifer Garrison at the Consortium of Reproductive Longevity Inequality at Buck Institute.
And I learned a lot about ovarian aging and how much it affects women's health. I'm particularly actually
personally obsessed with menopause, because when I learned that women age faster, their cellular aging is
accelerated by 6% during menopause. And this being the reason women are more propense to Alzheimer's and
cardiovascular disease. I thought this was a very important area of research. And then I looked into
the data and the funding and was shocked to find out that much like the rest of women's health research,
is very underserved. So I want to give you some, we have, we've prepared an amazing deck,
the team and myself. But as a quick intro, I will read the three areas of focus that we want to
help bridge the gap. One is the data gap, the funding gap, and the market gap.
The data gap, we're talking about how studies are mostly done in males, and there's less data
with women. So just a couple of examples. 70% of the people affected by chronic pain and conditions
are women. But 80% of research into pain is conducted on male humans or rodents. On the founding
gap, women researchers get 24% less money of NIH grants. And on the market gap, women are half the
population, but only 3% of digital health investments goes to femtech companies. So from my experience
contributing to VitaDAO and being very impressed by what they've managed to do in the longevity space,
having met some amazing women in DSI, like a lot of the women here in this call. And having these
conversations, we decided to get together and use Web3 decentralized science and the tools available to
push forward this important research. That was my reasoning for this. I'm going to let the rest of my
amazing co-conspirators to speak about their personal reason for wanting to get involved in this
mission. Ines?
Ines?
Yeah, thank you, Laura, for that introduction. I think, like you mentioned a lot about the data,
and I'm a big fan of understanding the situation and, as you mentioned, that data gap and the market
gap are very important parts that we are trying to address. But at the same time, I think we all
have personal stories that also contribute for us to be very much engaged in this topic. I personally
won't necessarily go into that, but I think all women, and we have been talking with a lot of women,
a lot of like, even inside of our group, we all have a story where lack of information,
lack of research, lack of understanding, we haven't been necessarily treated well, or
yeah, I think we have gone through situations that we didn't need to go if there was more information,
more research, and more focus on this area. So for me, besides, of course, like the big numbers
that you already mentioned, I think it's also very important to know that there's always also a very
personal story behind it that makes me want to really make a difference here and with other women,
but also men, address this issue. So that's my personal story and my personal reasons for being
engaged in Atina Dao.
I'll jump in now. Laura, I'm not sure if we're going to dig into more of our personal stories in a moment,
but I'll start with my more. It's an intellectual reason that becomes an emotional reason for wanting
to be involved in, in this project. You know, myself, and probably a lot of people here may have
come across the book called Invisible Women, which is a huge body of research of the way that
society is often not focused on women to the same extent as men in designing products, in designing
experiences, and of course, in designing medicines as well. And there's a really eye-opening chapter
called The Drugs Don't Work. And I was genuinely completely shocked to read, to read that chapter,
and I would encourage anyone who's remotely interested to go and check that out.
You know, it turns out that the majority of drugs, including basic research as well,
early stage pharmacology studies are done on male animals. And then there's also been a great
dominance of men in clinical trials until very recent years. And, you know, people thought that was
fine, that women were basically the same as men. And there are some simplifying factors to use,
to use men and male animals in, in, in research. And then they've started to uncover that, that
you can't just describe women as the same as men, but of a slightly different size or slightly different.
Um, and they've discovered that a large number of really important, um, drugs, like very commonly
prescribed generic drugs are simply way less effective in women. Um, that average dosing, um, for
people is often wrong because they were taken on, on largely male, um, uh, clinical trial groups, which tend to be,
um, uh, historically, uh, male, um, majority male, if not a hundred percent male. Um, and this is leading
to significant, um, health outcomes. You know, for example, women are 50% more likely to die after a
heart attack than men. Um, and there are, there are lots of other examples. So this sort of,
initially I was very led by the data. And, um, the more I've dug into this, the more I felt like,
I guess it's a main feeling of, uh, disbelief. Um, I think I'm not alone. Um, people who dig more
and more into the data are feeling a sense of like, this surely can't be the case. Surely not.
Uh, and then there's an element of, of outrage, um, and horror and certainly shock. Um, but yeah,
when you start to pair up the, um, patient outcomes, the medical outcomes with the experiences
that women have in universities, um, and in, uh, uh, uh, grant success and, uh, various, um,
well-documented, um, struggles that women have in, um, universities getting funding. Um, it starts
to paint a picture that we can't just hope that these things will resolve themselves, um, in a timely
fashion without working hard to put more energy and more attention, um, uh, into seeing the outcomes
that we, that we want, uh, legislation, regulate regulation has been very slow, um, to try and
equalize some of these, um, uh, uh, inequalities. Uh, and I think that, um, we've got a great group of
people here and we hope that we'll be able to create, um, much more outreach and much more attention.
And I think there's something that can, that can be done here that will have, uh, impact not only on
scientists, not only on patients, but also on, um, women's health more broadly long-term.
My story is very similar to this story for wanting to be involved in that, um, there are very personal
reasons and being a part of these different groups, um, across social media, women's groups,
and seeing how little attention there is, medical attention, and also research funding available for
these women's issues, um, and also being completely disregarded by physicians. And sometimes the
symptoms, um, are attributed towards, uh, towards being, you know, caused by a different reason
or completely ignored. And so I'm very passionate towards bringing more attention, uh, for the need,
um, of research funding towards reproductive health research and also patients now being able to
interact, um, having that, um, potential to interact with researchers and scientists, um, and actually
having that two-way street in which they can communicate, um, this decentralized community
community will allow, uh, for both patients and scientists to, um, support it. And so that's a big,
big, big reason why I'm here and why I've joined Athena Dow.
Thank you so much, Sandra. We are still having a little moment of, uh, issue with, um, Dee, um,
joining our conversation, Dee, who, but, um, um, um, I would love to go over why we're doing it now. I mean,
Isabel, what do you think? Um, sorry, why we're... Yeah, uh, why now? I think that one of the reasons
that, uh, why, like, something has to exist, um, as they say, the raison d'être, uh, d'être, we, um,
um, we put together, like, um, um, a document as to some of the reasons of why this is important
right now. And, um, I can speak from, uh, the work I've done in longevity that, um, um, for instance,
when we think of, um, as I said earlier, I'm obsessed with menopause. And, um, I did put the,
we did put this data point in our invitation, how one, uh, 1.1 billion women will be going through,
um, menopause by 2025. So that's in, uh, what do we say? That's in, um, three years. The crazy thing
about it is that, um, only about 30% of women feel prepared for it. And, um, of the entire, um,
reproductive health, um, spent, um, I guess investment only 14% has gone into this area.
So there is a massive, um, market opportunity in, um, helping women to this period. And this is not
the only area we're looking into, but, um, for me, this was one of the biggest things. How do we
advance, um, communities, um, that are interested in this? How do we put more research into finding
more solutions? Because we don't have that many solutions. And I know Nina is like a, um,
Nina who's here. She also is traveling. She has such incredible depths of information and data in
terms of, um, how little we're doing for women during this part of life. So that for me is one
big reason of the why now, um, I'm going to let the rest of the team talk and then would love for
people to start joining the conversation as well in terms of, um, their own experiences as we tell
you more about the why now and some of our initiatives and our roadmap in this.
Yeah. Thank you very much. Um, so I think, I think something that was also very important and
about this topic is like, even though I think there's like, as you mentioned,
how people in the world are women, uh, I think there's like, I think a lot of these conversations
are still some kind of a taboo. Uh, and that's part of our, our goal as well is like to make sure that
we open these conversations, people can learn from each other. So I think like peer to peer support
here is going to be very, very, very well, a very, very important. And, and again, that's why I think
like a DAO actually makes a lot of sense in this situation where, um, the community is so important,
and bringing women together to talk about these issues, uh, and being able to make a difference
there from basically from the start. And then of course we have more, more goals and, uh, I will
let the others also, uh, share our roadmap, but I think like that's also very important. We need to
make sure that these conversations stop being a taboo. We need to make sure that we are more informed
so we can make better decisions. Uh, and again, uh, there's still so much to do there and it's
very, very weird. I think maybe for some men, it's very weird that we are having this conversation.
Uh, but I think as, as a woman, uh, and talking with basically the, the, the members of the group,
we, we could actually see that we all have gone through most of the same problems. We all have gone
through most of the same situations that could be very easily avoided. Um, and hopefully this is, uh,
this is a start of something that can really make a difference, not only in terms of like concrete
actions in terms of like new research or more research, more solutions, but also in terms of,
um, creating some kind of a movement where these stories are heard, this story, our stories and our
issues are discussed so we can get better, better treatment, better solutions for whatever you are
facing. So I think that's also a very important part from my side.
Yeah, I think I can, um, uh, jump in with a take on why now, uh, in terms of a broader cultural
and, um, technology piece. Um, you know, we, we've seen that this problem of women being
understudied, underfunded, um, uh, and women's health areas being, um, variously overlooked.
Um, that's been going on for a while. What we have now is a energetic and emergent space
that is exploring, uh, new ways to overcome some of the, um, uh, problems that funding and supporting
breakthrough science has had. And that is this decentralized science space.
Um, in particular, you know, as a part of this, uh, we also have the web three movement, the ability
to create, uh, DAOs, which of course you can think of as, um, communities and means of organizing people
around, uh, particular missions, um, um, and aligning, um, community stakeholder and financial
incentives in a new way. Uh, and so it feels like there's a great opportunity here. You know,
if you have a really underfunded, um, area of science, uh, which because it's been underfunded
means that there's like more long hanging fruit available, um, um, and potentially, you know,
markets, uh, if you take it all the way through to biotechs and drugs and, um, um, femtech markets
that have not been addressed because of the historic underfunding, you end up with a group of, um,
variant stakeholders from funders through to, um, uh, scientists, uh, women, patients, and broadly
aligned, uh, people generally. And you can pull all of that, uh, attention together, um,
in order to try and, you know, push a particular mission forwards. Um, and it brings in this, um,
financial piece as well. It gives us the ability to organize, um, uh, funds in a way that is led by
the community and, uh, led of course, by scientific, um, expertise and best practice
on where we should be funneling this, um, investment in order to see the greatest impact.
So I think there's a real, uh, the space is very early. We've seen, um, a template of, um,
Vita DAO in longevity research, um, but there are other, um, investment DAOs as well that are proving
that this model works. Um, and you know, I feel like it, there's a, such a strong calling that
we should take these models and apply them in the areas that are likely to be highest impact.
Um, and I see this area here was historic, uh, uh, under, under funding and societal taboos
and lack of attention. It feels like a place where one can have outsized impact. And that's
of course, very, uh, uh, motivating place to be.
Um, thank you, Sabelle. I, I'm, um, I'm going to let, you know, speak about the roadmap a bit.
Uh, unfortunately, Dee is having a lot of technical difficulties joining the call. Uh, apparently she
is on her app, but she can't, um, able, she, we're not able to see her to actually bring her as a
speaker. So, um, just a quick mention of some of our early initiatives for people to keep in mind,
especially as we're recording this. And hopefully a lot of, uh, people will listen, uh, throughout
the 30 days of the recording is there. We're also going to trans, um, um, recorded ourselves this
call. Um, our first aspect is doing a reproductive health report, um, figure out where things are at,
uh, work with, um, academics, work with, um, hopefully with the, well, we'll be, we'll be
working with Dr. Garrison and we're attending a couple of conferences to get information together
and do a state of the, like would they say, the state of the union in reproductive health.
Uh, we are also going to be engaged on some of the researchers who've already run extensively
about this to contribute to a publication that we're going to do as well as
a speaker series. So one call to action that I can think of, of anybody here is to please,
um, if you know, women who are already active in the space, um, do them know we are here.
Uh, we, we are looking for their stories. Uh, we want to, uh, in a way be, make, be from promoting
this, uh, female researchers and scientists to, um, show out there what's, what's been happening
and what is happening in the field. And I'm going to stop because D is now a listener.
And since she hasn't had a chance to speak or introduce herself, I am going to bring her up
right away. So she can say, hello, D we send you the invite. So hopefully it works. You can, uh,
say yes to be able to speak. Uh, I don't know if it's working for you. Can somebody else try to send
a D the invitation to see if she can, um, if it works in S yes, I've tried. So it's on this side,
but maybe it's not working. I'm not sure. Um, okay, well let's get that, um, let's get that
sorted out. In the meantime, I'm going to let each one of the team members speak about some of the
things we're going to be working on and calls to actions to get people involved in this.
Yes. Thank you, Laura. I think there's like a lot of things that we want to do. As you mentioned,
like the report is definitely something that we, we want to get things started. There is also the
community aspect and we want to do mainly two things on, uh, or three things on that side.
So one is weekly onboarding meetings. Uh, we are going to make sure that we onboard everyone
well and everyone understands like what we are doing, why we are doing it and how they can
get involved. And that's something that's very important for us. We also, of course,
want to do a speaker series on reproductive health. There's so much to talk about there,
as I was mentioning before, and that's something that's very much aligned with one of the pillars
of a team about that is like the, um, the education side of, uh, of our mission. Um, and of course,
and then we want to make sure that we gather a lot of like reports research on, um, that's,
that's out there, uh, and we are able to share with the members and the people that sign up for our
newsletter. And of course, amplify the work done by researchers on the reproductive health space
and fan tech startups that are also in this space. Uh, so we, this is something that we want to get
started right now. Uh, even though of course there's like much more on our roadmap going forward,
um, and to make it, make it more official, um, uh, in terms of the structure of the DAO. But from,
from now on, we want to really focus on community education and research, uh, because we believe that
that's where we can start adding value from the get go. So this is, would be, uh, it's about,
do you want to talk a little bit more about the roadmap going forward?
Sure. Um, so our, our first, you know, we're, we're focusing really on, um, bringing together a
great community first. So that includes across, um, scientists, um, and we're already reaching out to a
number of, um, um, uh, scientists across like, um, some, um, relevant high profile labs to help get
involved. Um, uh, as well as, um, community of, um, Web3 or decentralized science people who would like to,
um, get involved and offer support. And then lastly, of course, we want to bring in more, um, more general,
uh, general women, not necessarily just, uh, scientists, um, or decentralized science folks.
Um, but people who've perhaps been affected by, um, the system or haven't received good
treatment or are interested in supporting the space. Um, of course it's not necessarily just
women, like people who are, uh, think that this cause is important. Um, and we're exploring the idea
of, um, um, and as mentioned, uh, allowing a place for people to share their stories more broadly and
perhaps build a, um, um, um, a, uh, a library of people's experiences that, um, in itself helps
raise awareness. Um, some of you may be familiar with the everyday sexism project, which did something
similar for, um, uh, everyday kind of microaggressions and it really brought to light a problem that people
didn't know about. So I think there's the opportunity to do that type of thing in terms of outreach for,
um, uh, health issues as well. Um, and it becomes something that could in fact be a, uh, uh, um,
portfolio of things that could spark further research as well. So it could become not only
an awareness tool, but actually a research, um, uh, tool as well. So community, community first.
Ah, I can't believe this. What a miracle. Sorry guys. Hey, um, I will. Okay. I'll, I'll wrap that
up quickly then. And then we'll hand over to, uh, see who we really want to hear from, um, community
first. Then of course, on our roadmap, I'm working out, uh, the best fit tokenomics and governments to,
to fit the goals of the DAO, which are going to be co-created of course, by, um, the community.
Um, and, uh, I will in fact leave it there for now. Cause I think that's, let's hear from Dee.
Hello, I'm Dee and I'm the scientific lead for Athena DAO. And I've actually just, uh, met with
Jennifer Garrison who leads the reproductive aging program at the Buck Institute. And we've decided,
we've, uh, come to the consensus that there's a lot about ovarian body that we don't understand.
This is an underexplored area and we really need to support this area of research to understand
female reproductive health span. So that's something that we really want to promote and support both in
an academic setting as well as in industry. So we want to support projects that are both translational
as well as just understanding why do ovaries age faster than the rest of the body and
the epigenetics of ovarian aging. We understand the epigenetics of regular aging and longevity,
but the ovaries have just been neglected. So these are the things that we want to target and try to
get recruit talent from around the world, give open opportunity to really support these projects
to understand this area that has been neglected. And our team will include both. So we have,
uh, our scientific advisory board has like, uh, Maria, Maria, and, um, we're going to get, uh,
hopefully Jennifer as well as other senior academics who are well aware of the field to help the top
projects to support. Dee, maybe you want to introduce yourself because, uh, you went straight into what
we're going to do with the science, but, um, uh, we were, we all gave a bit of an introduction to
ourselves and why we got together for this mission. Yeah. So I did a PhD in stem cells and reprogramming in
the early embryo at the university of Oxford. And then I went on to do my first postdoc and epigenetic
reprogramming that is required to make an egg in a dish. So that's still, um, not a reality. Actually,
gameto is well underway to do that. But, um, so these are the questions. Why, why are germ cells harder to,
uh, recapitulate in a dish? That's because they, they have a big epigenetic barrier. And, um, yeah,
those are areas that we have yet to understand. And I'm currently, um, a senior research associate,
uh, studying longevity and epigenetics. So I'm deep into the science field, well connected with,
um, expert Oxford and then together with Jennifer Garrison's, uh, collaborations in the U S and in
Asia, we hope to recruit really the top talents to address these very challenging questions on ovarian
biology. Thank you, Dee. And, um, you, um, I just also wanted to mention that Dee, I actually met Dee
through, uh, Vida Dao and somebody introduced her to me to, um, speak about her lab work. And when I saw
what she was doing, I thought, God, she will be interesting to get something going for reproductive
health. So, um, um, um, the amazing thing about web three is that you do get to meet a lot of the
great women in this space because there's not that many of us. And this is one of the big, uh,
things for us in terms of the community layer, trying to get more women involved in a web three
and decentralized science and, um, in a cause that matters to them because reproductive health
touches all of our lives, um, as women. And, um, it's something that no matter what you are,
whether you're an academic, a startup founder, a mother, whatever it is that you're doing,
we all have stories and the life of our ovary is an important aspect of, um, actually our health
and wellbeing and longevity. Um, so I wanted to point out to everybody as we're recording this,
that we do have our active link tree, please sign up to our community form. Um, I had to just close
right now, the discord link. We're having a technical issue with, um, the in between being
expired, but we should, should be able up and running, um, um, a cup and I'm half an hour to
make sure that everything is okay. However, we do have a community form and the community form, uh,
ask your interests and what you are doing. And, uh, we'll be actually communicating, um,
through a newsletter very soon and be able to tell you updates of everything we are doing as well as
joining the discord community and the different working groups. Um, I'm going to ask everybody now
to sort of, um, talk about their own group, uh, working group. I know that Ines and Sandra are going
to be doing the community onboarding, uh, on a weekly basis. And maybe I'll let you guys speak
about that and Isabel is going to be working in governance and tokenomics, but, um, back to you, Ines.
Uh, thank you, uh, Laura. Yeah. Uh, as, uh, as, as you mentioned, we, we are going to do this, uh,
onboarding, uh, weekly call, just, uh, as I mentioned before, just to make sure that people, uh, feel
welcome because we really want to grow our community, make sure that everyone is welcome. People
understand what we are doing. Uh, we, we also want to want to onboard more women in Web3. Um,
and basically, uh, with these, uh, weekly calls, this will be our, the easiest way to connect with us,
understand what we are doing and get involved. So yeah, we are very excited to start those calls
next week. Uh, if you, when you join our discord, you'll be able to, to see them there. Uh, yeah. And
again, make sure, feel free to also reach out to any of us, uh, if you have any questions or ideas,
suggestions in the meantime, because we are in this process of like growing a community,
making sure that we can support each other. Uh, so to, to, to, to join us.
To echo Ines, yes, please. We're also actively looking for anyone who would like to volunteer to be
discord moderator. So please reach out to any of us if you have any interests.
And I'm really excited for us to kick off our onboarding calls next week.
We're also, um, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. We're also, uh, a lot of us are experienced from other
DAOs. So a lot of us are from either Vita DAO or molecule, and I'm leading single cell epigenetics
lab from lab DAO. So our model is in terms of the funding and getting projects, it's very much
inspired by Vita DAO molecule, but, um, focused on female reproductive health stand.
Yeah. So to that end, we're going to, um, uh, when it comes to tokenomics and government,
we're going to be able to look back at what has been working extremely well, uh, Vita DAO. Um, um,
but also I've been obviously in conversations with them, um, with some of the new DAOs coming up in the
space such as side out also with Gitcoin to think about what type of governance models are, um,
most appropriate to dealing with something, um, uh, as complex as science. Um, so, you know,
one thing I can, I can point to is that, uh, uh, you know, you, a DAO, one of the most wonderful
things about it is that you've, you pull together the people who are creating value within that DAO,
and they're all owners of what you're, what you're creating. Um, of course, if you have, um, uh, uh,
if your governance model allows, um, for people to decide if they want to, um, um, take a particular
project forward, that's obviously easier for, um, certain things than others. Uh, and it can be
very difficult, uh, for non-scientists such as myself to work out if a particular scientific project
is, um, um, better than another particular scientific project. So, uh, in this space,
we're also hoping to be able to work with, uh, other, um, science DAOs in the space to explore, um,
and innovate on, um, governance models that, um, uh, kind of harmonize, um, uh, peer review and
expertise with community ownership and governance.
And we will ensure that we'll have senior group leaders from top institutes like the Buck or
Cambridge, uh, to be on our review panel to, so that scientists will take us very seriously.
So I wanted to point out that we have the discord, uh, link is working now properly. I just pinned it
at the top of the, uh, here, you can see it on the top of the screen over, uh, um, or the speaking
picture and the speaker photos. So please do join us. And as well on our profile, you can see your link
trade and our community sign up form. And we are looking for us to be able to collaborate with all
the amazing decentralized science communities out there. I do see, um, again, Ariella, thanks for the
web three women in science to join. And we are to have, we're in discussions with them. So, um,
Ines also collaborates closely with them. We are all participating in different, um, capacities
in decentralized science or startup founders. Um, Nicolina and myself are very passionate about
changing, um, reproductive health in particular, uh, giving more tools to women for perimenopause
and menopause. And she has an amazing startup, MinoH, which will be actually measuring, uh, glycans for,
to detect the perimenopause. So there's a lot of, um, amazing collaborators and, uh, women that we know
in science and in tech and hope to also have a lot of the men be, um, in the part of these spaces.
How can we, I guess we're going to try to figure out how to talk about menopause and for everybody
to not feel like it's a weird subject or icky. How do we make menopause sexy? Is that even possible?
I'm not sure. But, um, engaging communities will also be very important for us and, um,
getting women, um, in midlife, uh, all those amazing women that are speaking about this involved
here to work, not to get involved with the research, to meet the scientists, to learn more about what's
actually in the pipeline and have them give their feedback or be early users. So we also want to
build that gap to, uh, be able to, when startups, um, go to market, already have a community in place
to test their products or to be early advocates and supporters. With that said, we would love to
have some of you up here. If you have, um, something to say or to share with us, um, we, uh, we are
looking to obviously make this an ongoing conversation and, um, get some early feedback
ideas or, um, advice. It's always good. Um, uh, so anybody wants to come up, please let us know.
Uh, we are going to be announcing the first, first community onboarding calls and, uh, Ines and Sandra
are going to be leading those. Dee is going to be sending out next week a form to start, um, looking
at different projects and, um, putting a call to submissions. Dee, can you tell us about some,
I mean, we are going to be having some of the VitaDAO team, uh, as she mentioned, uh, Dr. Jennifer
Garrison is going to be advising us and some of the amazing leaders in biotech work with us to, um,
to have a very robust and interesting model to look at funding and to look at new projects. Dee?
Regarding the projects?
Yeah. Um, you're going to be looking, I mean, you, uh, if you could tell us about some of the areas that
we're, we're going to be looking at and, um, the submissions.
Um, that's still pending. Yeah. So on, sorry, I'm having trouble finding that list of topics,
but we had a list of topics on that, on that. Um, yeah. Um, well, some of the areas that come to
mind, uh, for me are PCOS, endometriosis, um, there's obviously the moonshots, very interesting
stuff on, uh, the, um, yes. Okay. Yeah. So like hormonal infertility, endometriosis,
endometriosis, contraceptives, PCOS, menopause, um, sexual health, postmenopausal osteoporosis.
So, but we will also say in the form, we're not limited to this because Jennifer Garrison
and I discussed, um, we should open it up to the top scientists to be creative and come up with
their suggestions as well. Um, and as well, like the artificial womb, like I've had a discussion
with this with Jennifer and she said both the artificial womb and stem cells into human eggs,
moon shots, they're already being worked on. And some of the companies are very close. So other
moonshots are, yeah, we would like other moonshots essentially, but very exciting. And we hope to
get this form out in the next week and then try to have a list of top projects that we're ready to go
to fund. In terms of tokenomics and governance, um, as we had mentioned, we do love how things were
done with VidaDAO. However, because we want to bring a community layer of onboarding, uh, women
that are not necessarily scientists or just enthusiasts, but potential users, we are looking
at, uh, exploring different models between the token and an NFT membership. And I know, uh, we've
had multiple conversations, but it's, um, it's early days and maybe Isabel can tell us a bit more about
some of the notions that we're thinking of here.
Uh, in terms of tokenomics and governance, did you say?
Yes. Yeah. Um, sorry. Occasionally it cuts out for me. Um, yep. We're, um, exploring a few,
um, different models and, um, in particular, you know, one should, should always think about what model,
um, serves the purpose of your strategy and your community, um, first and foremost. So while we
already have a map of options, we wouldn't, uh, pick them yet until we see more of like how the
community evolves. Um, so one option is, um, a, uh, a classic, um, governance token, um, ERC20 token.
Um, this is what, um, these DAO use and that's, um, uh, one of the top things that we're considering.
Um, however, there's also, um, uh, models being used quite successfully where you use, uh, an NFT,
um, uh, to denote membership. Uh, and I'm not necessarily talking, uh, art NFTs, but more membership, uh, NFTs,
which allows, uh, access to particular, um, resources or member benefits, or that people
can buy as sponsorship for, uh, uh, you know, sort of member contribution towards the, um, ongoing,
um, development of the, of the DAO. And I think that model is perhaps particularly suited, uh, if we
have a, a large, um, uh, following of, um, uh, sort of more general interest people who want to be
involved, who want to get, um, more community based benefits from the society and want to support
and want to support the community, but don't necessarily want to, um, um, kind of speculate,
uh, or, um, um, be as involved in, um, governance. Uh, of course you can match that up with using NFTs
to signal, uh, interest. Uh, you can, you can use them for voting mechanisms. Um, we've also been looking
at, um, uh, using quadratic funding, um, or other could probably more likely quadratic voting
mechanisms to, um, uh, be more nuanced in our distribution of funds. Um, so there's essentially
a research piece going on at the moment over what will serve our community's interests best.
Um, and of course we'll be looking for people to get involved, um, with that. So if anyone's interested,
then, uh, hit us up.
Thank you, Sabelle. Um, I guess I wanted, um, we are almost at the top of the hour,
so I just want to remind everybody that, uh, we record this call. We would love for, um,
all of you who are listening to share our mission, to join, um, join us on the Discord or join in some
capacity. And, um, obviously we're looking for the networks of fact and to be as efficient as, um,
Vita Dow was in terms of, uh, building a community. There are a lot of similarities
in the longevity community and the women's health, uh, femtech community in the sense that, um,
they are underfunded. Uh, there's the community that's looking for solutions
and, uh, there's massive opportunity. So that's why we thought, um, this needed to happen because
both, um, they don't seem to be the same kind of, uh, problems, but both communities are similar
in many ways. And hopefully we can, um, achieve some of the great metrics that Vita Dow in terms of,
has done in terms of funding. And hopefully we can onboard a lot more women into the space
and, um, in a, with a cause that does matter to them. So, um, thank you so much for everybody
that was here on this call and, uh, thank you for all the early support. Please do share our
mission and it's early days. We have, um, it's, we're going to be doing a lot of things in the next
two, three months, and hopefully we're going to have a lot of you, um, joining us in this mission.
And if any of my other co-hosts can speak, um, hopefully in our next community call, we can have
Nicolina Lau, who's here, but couldn't join on actually talking and Maria Marinova, who
one is also a researcher and, um, Nicolina is a startup founder, talk about what they're doing
and why they're also, uh, joining us to do, to, to push and rally around reproductive health research.
Yeah. In terms of the science, like the technology is there to study why ovaries age faster, which it,
it just has not been done. So we really need to shed light on this important question and get it done.
And also if anyone has any science related questions, I as well posted on the discord,
uh, regarding female reproductive health, feel free to reach out to me. I'm happy to address any science
questions and explain it. Um, I have an amazing question from Amy who's here is how are women
able to pitch for their projects? Um, Amy fill out the community, uh, form. We are going to be sending
out an email to, um, call for submissions as soon as D has the form, which we are going to be, um,
we'll have ready next week for early submissions. Uh, we want to do the, look at the submissions and
then do the vetting with our scientific advisory board, and then pitch a three to five high quality
projects for us to rally around, to do our first round of funding. So please also feel free, everybody
feel free to contact us through, um, this, uh, channel discord email or link tree has our information.
And, um, we're all very open to conversations and ideas and collaborations to see how we make this happen.
Thanks for mentioning that D. Thank you.
So thank you so much everybody for being here again and, uh, share our mission, join us on this cause.
Let's, um, as some of our very hard, a very strong advocates in this space say, let's, uh, make
problems for fertility and menopause a thing of the past. And more importantly, let's extend, um,
um, healthy. I was like, I would like to say longevity for women and for everybody. If women
are healthy, the children are healthy and the men are healthy. So focusing on women's health is good
for everyone. Um, thank you so much. Uh, please do share the recording and join us on this mission.
And thank you so much for my co conspirators for this time and, uh, see you all on discord and other
channels and our next community, uh, call. Bye everybody. We're going to close the room
in a couple of seconds. Could I say like a geeky science thing or yes, please? Yeah. So basically,
uh, you know how we can reprogram a skin cell into back into a stem cell using Yamanaka factors. That
was a Nobel prize. Um, so you can take any cell and turn it into a stem cell. However, it does not work
for ovaries. It does not work for eggs. So why is it that we cannot epigenetically reprogram eggs?
That's yet another unanswered question. So yeah. I love that you mentioned that, uh, that, uh,
the science is the most important part. So finding those gaps will be key. Yeah. Love that D thank you.
And hopefully people will ponder about this when they listen to the recording.
That's a huge question. Why does the Yamanaka factors not work? That's David Sinclair. You
already found the next moonshot. Yeah. And so we need a new set of factors for eggs specifically.
Yeah. Um, thank you so much for that. And let's have the discussion on, uh,
let's join that lively discussion on this court. Yeah. Thank you again, everybody. We're
gonna end the room now and, uh, see you over there. Bye.
