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AthenaDAO End of Year Town Hall
Recorded: Dec. 16, 2025 Duration: 0:35:36Space Recording
Short Summary
Athena DAO is making strides in women's health with the launch of its equity vehicle, a new stealth project targeting fertility issues, and collaborations aimed at enhancing data collection. The DAO's commitment to funding innovative research is evident in its support for clinical trials, paving the way for significant advancements in women's health technology.
Full Transcription
. Thank you. Thank you. Hi everyone, good afternoon, good evening or good morning wherever you are. We're just going to wait a couple of
minutes more for people to show up. Nick, I invited you to be a speaker. See if you can
just make sure that you are on a phone because you cannot do usually do it on a desktop unless
they change that. And since we're recording, we'll just try to be very to the point about some of the things we want to discuss.
We're not sure if rooms work anymore with X, specifically also because our accounts have been really flooded with spam in bots lately. And I don't think the algorithm favors accounts
that have a lot of bots into the system.
So more importantly, this is our last community call of the year.
We usually do this in private.
We figure we would have it in public.
So it is recorded, and anybody who's curious can click on it and listen.
It's going to be a short call. We just want to give some quick updates on what we did on 2025
and some of our plans for 2026. We'll just wait a couple more minutes. Nick, can you test your mic?
Testing. Can you hear me?
Yeah, perfect. I'm going to invite also, I know that Inez is sick, but I'll invite her to speak.
So she's a speaker.
I'll invite Inez.
The other Inez.
Who else?
Put your hand up if maybe Rebecca or who else is here?
Gabrielle was here, but I don't see her anymore if you guys
on stage Victoria remembers so this is just a quick call welcome to anybody who is
So I'm the founder of Oval AI.
And the call today is just to go over the
we got done and to talk about for 20,
20, 20, 26. I was going to say 20,
28. So I was really going into the future.
Thanks everybody who's joining i see
francesca here i see a couple of other people yusuf who's been an amazing community moderator
um he's out there always welcoming you on discord and all our other chats making sure that everybody's informed about everything. So let me start with how we had a great 2025.
Who's joining us the speaker?
Serhi, can you test your mic?
Yes. Hi. Hello. Hi.
Oh, perfect.
So Serhi is the founder of Oval AI, and Nick is here, founder of Life Ahead.
Serhi, before I go into my recap of 2025, do you want to introduce Oval.ai, what you do?
And then we'll let Nick say hi and introduce also what they do. Go ahead.
Yes. Hello, everyone. Hi. It's a pleasure to be here and always a pleasure to be a part of a Finodal community.
At Oval, we test hormones daily, provide insights into women's health based on real
hormonal data. And this year was huge for us. We have so many changes and we very much appreciate
being a part of Afinadal. Thanks so much.
Yes, we're going to give an update about our clinical trial that we're finalizing the IRBs.
So the devices are going to be early next year.
We're excited about that.
Nick, do you want to introduce yourself and what life... Sure, yeah. You're breaking up a little bit. I don't know if it's just for me or Paul.
Can you hear me, Nick? Yes.
Oh, it's me who's breaking up. Sorry. Can you introduce yourself and what Life Ahead does?
Yes. Hi, everyone. I'm Nick Gentry. I am CEO and co-founder of Life Ahead.
And for those of you who don't know, we are a spin out from Dr. Joshua Johnson's lab,
whose research has been funded by Athena Dow in the past. And we have developed a, or the Josh and his colleagues
have developed from some new lab findings,
a mechanistic model of egg reserve decline
to allow us to forecast the timing
of the menopausal transition in a personalized manner.
Yeah, would you like me to go into updates now or is that later?
No, after.
Okay.
Did you guys think to do yourself as like our special guests?
And I think we have some other community.
I ask, well, if anybody from the Science and Geofloat team,
you know, just say so and just request the mic and I'll have you up here. I kind of pinged a couple of you, but people are being
shy. On 2025, we had our first demo day. We're going to be posting the links for all of this
as I speak. It was a very exciting moment to feature some of the seven companies
that we are supporting.
Most of them are in the fertility space, whether it is tackling
extending fertility or delaying menopause,
as well as treating conditions like Picos and theometriosis.
So that was very exciting and it happened this summer.
The other very exciting project that we had was
our data for women.ai publication,
which was to signal our data cohort.
The biggest problem in scientific research
and women's health and maybe even in other areas
of research is data.
So with this landmark publication,
it's on free standing alone website,
we dealt into some of the issues.
I think when we are talking about data,
people misunderstand how hard it is to get,
how difficult it is to get people
to give it to you consistently,
and how the systems don't work between each other.
I can't even say the word right now.
Interoperability is a hard thing to manage when, for instance, in the U.S.,
all different states have different systems to manage patient data.
So our publication, DataForWomen..ai went and delved into this.
We intended to be something that we continue
because we want to, one of the big moonshots
that we want to try to tackle in 2026 is the data problem.
But that's, you know, I'll go into the 2026 part.
We also obviously supported the spin out of Life Ahead, which you just met Nick,
and we're very excited about this because it was the first company that we helped come out of a
lab. And more excited about the fact that there is now a tool as scientifically validated and not
like you hear supplements are scientifically validated., supplements are just still not going to do much for you.
And when we talk about scientifically validation is that, for instance, Nick is going to talk about their FDA approval that they're working on.
We also had earlier in the year our first fertility course, and we had so many rate reviews about it.
The only reason we cannot do them as often as
possible is because it's a lot of work and it takes away from some of the r d work and due
diligence work that the science and deal flow team does so in the in the new year in 2026 we are
going to have another fertility course 101 version cohort 2. We also participated in a lot of conferences this year.
We did a Reprotech curation for Prospera, which in the Infinita City, which was amazing.
We had the founder, I'm sorry, we had one of the biggest names in polygenic score,
polygenic score, embryo polygenic scoring, which is Dr. Jonathan Anomaly.
Then Camille, who everybody knows, talks about data here next all the time, was one of our
guest speakers, Dr. Joshua Johnson, and Dr. Paula Amado, who was in the news this September with her and other colleagues
advancing in vitro gametogenesis, which is the next generation of ReproTac.
For those who don't know what in vitro gametogenesis is, researchers are working in ways in which
we can take skin cells and be able to create from those stem cells to create an actual
egg so in the future and in a very very future potentially you will have you will be able to
get new eggs not necessarily just um from how we do it now but but from skin stem cells. So exciting technology there. It's still very early
days. We had an amazing talk with Dr. Paula Amaro. We attended D-Side London. We also were sponsors
of two academic conferences this year, the Ovarian Workshop in Lisbon and Portugal in early spring,
Lisbon and Portugal in early spring and the Reproductive Medicine Conference in London
this late fall.
It's super important for us to be supporting academic research.
That's what our focus is.
Athena Dow has always been about science first.
So we were very proud to sponsor academic conferences where researchers are actually presenting
work and research that is advancing the field.
The only thing that really advances the field is this researchers doing the work, to be
honest.
And it's super important that we continue supporting that work and try to get as much
capital to them as possible. The other exciting announcement is that we are doing our first equity vehicle, Athena Bio,
which focuses on funding some of the assets that are coming out of the DAO alongside other potential
new companies that have come through our scientific deal flow. It's a way to move into
legacy systems and try to put an influx of capital from traditional biotech and other
traditional investors. Crypto and Deci are very exciting, but there are limitations if you don't
want to be launching tokens every month.
So one of the reasons that we're moving into traditional legacy systems is because science is expensive and you also need the credibility of other investors that are in
the space to be able to push these assets forward. With that said, going into the moonshots for 2026,
forward. With that said, going into the moonshots for 2026, one of the very things that we're very
excited about is that we are going to be, we're working on a stealth company. It's one of our
first funded researchers, Dr. Mario Cordero, which we're going to, I guess is going to come out of cell in 2026. And it's a small molecule to tackle diminished
ovarian reserve, which is a very real way to tackle fertility extension or delaying menopause.
We're particularly excited because Dr. Mario Cordero's research was one of our first IP NFTs.
was one of our first IP NFTs. He's been working on this for two years now. His milestones were
ahead of time. And we came up, we were the first project in the ecosystem to have positive
in vivo animal model data. And this was with mice. So we're already talking to investors, we're already talking to pharma, we already even have been approached for a deal.
So, we're very excited about this and that's what we're going to be putting a lot of focus on.
So, our big theme for 2026 is a moonshot on fertility and this one is one for us.
And this one is one for us.
And I'm very excited.
The two projects that are complementary to that are Life Ahead and then Oval AI.
Both are tools that if you have a fertility tech stack, imagine that you get your Life Ahead predictive model and knowing when your fertility is going to end and your menopause is going to start.
And then with Surgeistool, you can actually figure out through the hormonal fluctuations
the best days that you can actually try to get IVF done or know more about your hormonal health,
even when you're going through perimenopause. And ultimately, the dream is that one day you can actually take a pill that will allow
you to extend your fertility. We call it a potential for our Viagra moment. And I'm not
going to deny it. It's a moonshot because drug discovery is extremely expensive and it's very
risky. And you can think that you have the best asset in the world and then you get to phase two clinical trials
and it all collapses.
But somebody needs to try
and the only way we prove that D-Side works
is if one project succeeds.
So this is our call to trying to succeed
in making something that came out
out of the initial funding mechanism here
into something that is tangible. that means women can have something in
their hands that actually helps them extend fertility. So anybody curious
about that? We're gonna be giving a lot more news in the new year. At the other
moonshot that we're gonna have, you know, we are very excited about is potentially collaborating with other organizations on data collection.
And we're talking about not necessarily digital organizations, but organizations in biotech.
So that's very exciting for us. We also have two projects in the go with other foundations that specialize in other areas of women's health.
To be able to, in the new year, do cohorts in collaborations with them rather than just by ourselves.
To make what we do even more efficient in the sense that we would be working with other foundations to push one particular stream of
research. Two of them are in pelvic. One of them is in pelvic health and the other one is in
autoimmune disorders. So, 2026 is shaping up to be very busy for us and we're very excited about
this. I want to say that none of this would happen if we didn't have the incredible science and
dual flow team group that we have. And I want to say thank you so much for this team because
thanks to them, we can make this happen. They are diligently coming every week. They're doing the
work. They're making sure that we are plugged into the best science. They're managing things
like clinical human trials with Surhee. They are managing, doing the collaboration outbound.
They're doing the deal flow. They are the ones who wrote the data for women.ai publication.
And all of that while still doing their own academic work, their own interests and everything else.
If it wasn't for, you know, Inez, Victoria, also in the core team, managing the back end,
none of this would happen. So I think the most interesting thing is that people try to, you know,
I just finished a call today asking me about the DAO system and how it works. And I think the most
valuable thing that we built is obviously a group of
people that are motivated no matter what to get the field ahead so cool
here and showing up every day and i'm really looking forward to 2026
to 2026 because we have a lot of exciting projects on the go.
because we have a lot of exciting projects on the go
I also let our two guests,
they were two projects that we presented on our demo day.
One of the big ones, I think, for Nick to focus, if you can
FDA approval and for Sahi to go over the IRB
and how we're almost ready and what the process
is going to be next at the beginning of the year for getting the clinical trial done.
Nick?
Hi, can you hear me?
Okay.
All right.
Hey, everyone.
I'll provide a bit of updates of what we've been at for the last few months with a little
bit of a focus on the FDA approval process, as Laura mentioned.
Okay, so taking things from the beginning, in the past few months, we have secured our exclusive global university license to allow us to sell the algorithm, the tool that we're creating out of this algorithm
anywhere in the world.
We've run some usability studies.
I'm an MVP of the tool with doctors
and allowing us to co-develop it a bit
to match their workflows and see what they need
and what they think would work best with their patients.
And yes, so our major goal for,
that we are currently undergoing
and working on the next few months is we have submitted to the FDA what's called a pre-submission for a software as a medical device approval.
We're waiting on this return.
What this pre-submission does is tell us exactly what we need or are missing in our full application prior to submitting that full application for approval.
application prior to submitting that full application for approval.
So it's kind of a bit of a cheat sheet to allow us to go into the full final process
as prepared as we possibly can be.
And so we're waiting on that to come back, which takes a few weeks usually, about two
months.
And then the software as a medical device process of this type has a median
approval timeline of about six months, give or take a few. And so our vision for going through
this, the FDA approval process is we want to provide a tool that is actually clinically
actionable, something that's trusted that can actually fill a gap in women's health diagnostics,
rather than something that is purely direct to consumer that clinicians might not trust to be able to make real decisions on. Part of this as well is that for the Reprotech stack, as Laura
has mentioned, we need to build approval and build the scientific evidence structure to be able to serve as a biomarker for assessing fertility and menopause delaying therapeutics.
So as Laura mentioned, the novel therapeutics that Athena Dell was working on could delay diminished ovarian reserve.
Adele was working on, could delay diminished ovarian reserve. And by having a biomarker that
Life Ahead provides of providing the timing of menopause and the end of fertility, this will
allow trials that are a lot shorter, cheaper, and more effective, essentially meaning you don't have
to wait the full 5, 10, 15 years or so until someone actually undergoes the transition into menopause.
So that's the FDA approval process that we'll be engaging with in the next few months. It's a major,
major validation event. And once we have that, then we'll be able to fully sell with clinics.
We are in talks with clinical networks currently and a few clinicians who are very excited about the
evidence-based nature of the
tool and how it could fit into their workflows and we are working on developing pilots for them
to see where it would best fit in their practice that will converge convert into commercial
contracts as soon as we are ready and so yeah that's where we're at. And finally, we are seeking to raise immediately and rapidly following the return of that pre-submission information, which will be expect that to be later in Q1 next year.
This is because that pre-submission will give us a very precise timeline and cost for approval so we can present a very clear roadmap to full commercialization and revenue generation.
present a very clear roadmap to full commercialization and revenue generation.
So, okay, if you're curious, reach out via our website.
Please follow our X account as well.
Stay tuned.
And that's what I have updates for now.
I guess, are we doing questions or should we pass it on to the next person?
No, we'll let, if anybody wants to come up for sure, we'll allow them to come up and ask questions.
We'll do Surhee next.
I just want to make a comment very quickly because I'm very excited about the fact that this is,
just for clarification for women who would want to use the Surhee,
this is going to be something that Life Ahead works directly with IVF clinics and clinicians.
something that Life Ahead works directly with IVF clinics and clinicians. It's not an app that you
just go and say, oh, it's going to give you your fertility because they take information that IVF
clinics would be taking when you're trying to either freeze your eggs or going to IVF.
To me, this is so important because I can promise you there's no app in the world that's going to predict your menopause correctly with digital biomarkers.
It's not true if that's what is being sold.
And one of the hardest things that I'm finding is that quote unquote reproductive longevity is becoming unquote, hot in the femtech space.
And a lot of people are getting, you know, saying, ooh, longevity, women's longevity and all of these things.
And a lot of the things that are coming out is more apps into prediction of menopause.
And I'm very concerned because in order to viably look into this information, you need things that are beyond what an app can do.
Until I don't see something that shows me you're actually accessing more information than digital biomarkers.
For instance, you need something like saliva or you need to actually look at blood or imaging. There are so many things that come into
play to even for the algorithm that Life Ahead is doing that if even, you know, with that
information, it makes sense. But I don't, you know, I want women to be very cognizant that
now that reproductive longevity and women's longevity is quote-unquote getting hot, we're still going to get more of that placebo stuff sold to us.
And it's concerning to me because that doesn't move the needle.
So just beware, buyers beware, and really look at what information is being taken to be able to do, I mean, to be able to say, make those claims.
You know, in an ideal world, something like Life Ahead happens very early stage in a woman's
life, like in her late 29, early 30s.
So the whole plan, and I guess the name, was that you could plan your life ahead.
Because it wouldn't be amazing if you know your fertility is going to, quote unquote, taper off at 42, so you know that
you need to do your IBF or have your babies before that, or it's going to get very, very difficult.
If we had somewhere that, I mean, when we have these tools, it could really make a difference in life planning and your choices for obviously how you're going to manage trying to have children or the opportunity to do all the things you can do to live children later in life.
That was my like after comment with you, Nick.
Again, yes, if anybody wants to come and make any comments or do any questions, please let us know. I'm going to now let Serhi, the founder of Oval AI, talk about our clinical trial that we've been working on for some months now. And where are we at with that, Serhi?
And where are we at with that, Serhii?
Yes, Laura, thank you so much.
And thank you so much for explaining this,
like that we need to track something for some period of time
to understand what is really working, what is not.
So I will tell about this later on.
So OVL is basically a microscope that makes photos of your dried saliva,
checks chemical changes with computer visions
and tells what your estrogen levels are.
So that's what we are now.
Our second clinical study, which is funded by Afinadao,
is about tracking also the stress levels and hydration levels.
We are now preparing our final documents for IRB committee,
like a full research protocol,
plan the submission,
and we want to start the trials within the following next three months.
And what I would say was very important during this preparation
that this wasn't like some theoretical stuff.
It's already changing the product
and changing the way how we basically prepare
everything at all and what we want to achieve. So with every single user, we now see the
importance of daily tracking. We see the interventions, like analog symptoms. We see
what's happening in real life. We check hormone levels, we provide insights,
and we can really say what's working for your personal health and what is not.
Like some kind of supplements, some kind of very specific activities,
some kind of whatever you do in your real daily life.
And then we can inform you how this is happening, why this is happening, and help you make a decision. Do you need to change something or not? And this is all
what we have done right now is like to build this tool, which will help women to understand
current daily life, hormonal levels, and possible insights and interventions that you can perform.
and possible insights and interventions you can perform.
A lot of it is shaped by our upcoming research.
So we are preparing our backend,
we are preparing our data protection,
the security levels, all that stuff.
And also asking users like real women who are using devices,
like what do you want to have?
What do you want to achieve?
And how can we help you with that? And I want to thank so much, Laura, to all your team,
especially Ines for a great support,
and Sam for the great support for the documentation.
And we really hope that next month we will apply everything
and in the next three months we will start the trials.
Thanks, Sergi, and thank you. Yes, Sam, who is a professor of, oh my God and researchers that I've ever met working
Thanks, Sergei, and thank you, yes,
with hormones, specifically because you can give her anything and she'll tell you
why something will work, why it won't, and think of the solution around it. And Ines,
who is one of our science and deal flow
leads she's been doing all the work with Serhi to get the documentation together to make sure
that she goes back between the team on the IRB people don't realize but clinical trials are
very complicated and we're lucky that ours is I mean a device it device, it's saliva, it's just a lot of coordination.
And the IRB is to meet a very specific criteria
to make sure that the data is protected,
to make sure that we are taking all the boxes
that is required for this to eventually being something
that we can publish about.
And that the scientific research was done with all the highest standards.
So we're very excited about this because it's going to be a publication.
And obviously, Athena Dow is going to be one of the co-authors.
So it'll be specifically on tracking these biomarkers in hormonal health,
which, as we all know, is still a bit of a black hole because there's so much we don't know about it.
With that said, we wanted to make this fast and furious.
2026 is a lot about continuing our work.
Everything in women's health is a moonshot because we know so little and we
require so much in terms of data and capital allocation. But the best thing is that every year
we realize that we have the most motivated community that actually care about the science,
actually care about advancing the field. And that's why we do what we do.
care about advancing the field. And that's why we do what we do. If anyone has any comments,
any questions, let me know. If not, I just wanted to say happy holidays to everyone.
All the best for 2026. Please join us. We do take those community meetings are usually
in private, but reminder that Athena DAO is an open community.
You can join as a contributor.
You can join us even just being here in the chats and be considered one of our members.
And reminder to tell everybody about our work.
There's nothing that works more than word of mouth and keep telling people about what we do and how much we've done.
And congrats to the entire team for another amazing year.
And I have a really good feeling about 2026 being a great year for women's health.
And since we've been doing so much work, I hope that that means it's a great year also for Athena Dow.
doing so much work i hope that that means it's a great year also for athena dow
any comments any last thoughts from nick serhi anyone wants to say anything this is the time
if not we're going to call it a day and have a great great uh vacation for christmas and a happy, happy new year.
One comment from my side. We will be at
CS Electronics Show.
Can you hear us?
Oh, congrats. That'd be so cool. That's huge.
Yes. So
everybody, please come to our booth.
If there is a need in
tickets or in anything
we can support with, just hit a message to
Laura, to myself myself and we will help
with that so we are more than happy to meet you everybody at CS oh thanks sir hey congrats
I don't know who needs to know but I went to CS for eight years of my life I had a booth there
for a long time with my previous life Vegas the the first week of January. So much fun.
No, not really. I had to be in Vegas for 10 days of the year every year for a decade from this
January 2nd until like the 8th or 10th. I did not enjoy that, but I did know Vegas well.
Anyways, that's another chat. Thank you everybody. Have a great holiday.
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