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DeSci Rising x Ginger Science | ep 10
Recorded: June 25, 2025 Duration: 0:23:40Space Recording
Short Summary
Ginger Science is launching a groundbreaking platform dedicated to the genetic and wellness needs of the redhead community, leveraging Web3 technology to empower individuals and enhance health research. The initiative includes strategic partnerships and focuses on the unique MC1R gene, marking a significant trend in personalized health solutions.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. hi nina
hi how you doing i'm doing good how are you super i'm glad to finally get to talk to you again i
know i know since Denver.
And we even had like very brief time to Denver was a crazy time.
Oh, it was crazy. But yeah, Denver is where I got inspired for Ginger Science.
Oh, really? Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. I was there.
You know, I've been working on infrastructure forever.
You know, I've been working on infrastructure forever.
Yes.
Yes.
And one of the things I was noticing in Denver is that there were more than one to 2% of Desai founders who were red haired.
And I'm like, hmm.
Yes.
And then it just like clicked that this was real fun, personal, and I could move
really fast, um, to make translational stuff to help other people. Yeah. I mean, you know, our,
our very own co-founder Josh is I think one of the, one of those leading redheads in design.
of those leading redheads in design so yeah it's a good uh it's it's an interesting thing i love to
see these kind of projects come together um so so i mean usually i wait a little bit but there's so
much that i want to talk about in in this particular episode um and i think there's a lot that we can
just discuss that is truly hopefully going to change the scope and how the space is moving
particularly more in terms of the actual practical application of Desai. So I think I
will probably prefer to kick it off. Are you comfortable? You good with doing that right now?
No, I'm fine. I'm ready to roll. All right, let's do that. So we have a little intro and I'll kick
it off here. So hello everybody, my name is Jelani. Now welcome to Season 2, Episode 10 of the Desai Rising series put on by Desai World,
where our goal is always to provide an opportunity for many of the wonderful projects on our growing Desai World dashboard,
of which Nina, you still haven't submitted yet, but still,
to just kind of formally introduce themselves, update their progress, highlight their achievements,
and just generally engage with both the Desai world, but also the broader DSI community.
Now, the idea behind all this is always that at DSI world, we very much believe that more
than the tech, more than the funding, it is really the community using these tools that
are going to usher in all of the many changes that we're hoping that DSI brings to the various
that we're hoping that Desai brings to the various legacy STEM industries.
legacy STEM industries.
Now, on today's episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Nina Kilbride,
who is a powerhouse extraordinaire.
She is, among many things, the recent founder of Ginger Science,
which is a very interesting project that we're going to be focusing on.
But I'd also like to take the time to talk about some of the other initiatives that you're a part of.
But Ginger Science is a platform, the first platform, dedicated to exploring the intersection
of genetics, longevity, and personalized wellness within the redhead or ginger community.
And so all that being said, Nina, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me today,
talk about what you are doing, and help us learn more about mcr1 and the ginger
ecosystem but also the very like the number of other things that you're doing in the space
absolutely where you want to get started all right so because this is as much a space to
showcase projects as it is the builders behind those projects i think it's important for us to
speak about how you are like your journey into D-size. So I know
you're a lawyer extraordinaire and all that. But what was that transition like? Where have you,
where was your, where does your origin story start from? Oh, well, so I was a lawyer here
in Raleigh, North Carolina. Research Triangle Park is, you know, the crucible of the centralized
research industrial complex.
So I kind of knew how the sausage was made around here in the first place.
I'm a rare disease mom.
So I was really a bit ticked off about how the sausage is made around here.
Right.
Fast forward to about 2015. I learned about Ethereum and just said I could I knew I knew that the end game of this was going
to be to really improve the operations of clinical research.
And there was so much validating evidence on that for me.
And then I was able, I've got a lot of girlfriends who run clinical trials because that's what
we do around here.
And so and they're, of course, married to software developers. So I was able to validate a lot of my hypotheses around DSI while I was still practicing law 10 years ago.
And then so for the last 10 years, I've been just iterating different things that I knew were going to be a component of this stack.
Looking forward to being here today when DSi is really coming to life with real applications and
use cases. Yeah. And I think that's the really important piece here because as much as DSi has
been kind of, you know, at least internally touted as this next step to
what science could be i think you know the the practical application of it especially at an
industrial scale just hasn't quite been there yet and i think we're starting now to see those
enterprise scalable you know real like meat space applicable um tools and features and protocols
and infrastructures that'll hopefully actually help expedite the time it takes to determine discoveries and ideally also be able to
provide us with prophylactic solutions so that we don't have to just catch these things once
they've already been manifested or we can at least detect things early. So that's fantastic.
I think, you know, so that led you into the Desai space.
And where you and I originally met was off of David and Remedy and their ecosystem and what they were looking at, what they were are looking to build.
But now I've seen you just kind of explode onto the broader Desai scene.
seen. And so what has that transition been like? Well, so I've been, I worked with Remedy,
And so what has that transition been like?
which is a SaaS application of Web3 for healthcare. And I've been, I've worked with
them as an advisor since like 2017 or 18 before they, they even had, had formed. So, you know,
formed. So, you know, we had been working on how are we going to open up their infrastructure
that operates in, it already operates, it's tested, it's proven in market and all that
kind of stuff. We want to open it up for DSi. But in February, one of our co-founders died.
And, you know, Jason Cross, which a lot of folks in DSI know, and that I could just execute,
execute, execute, because there aren't a lot of unanswered questions.
Yeah, that's true. And I mean, a big to those, I mean, I know there are a few people in the crowd
that know Jason, I knew Jason. So condolences to you guys, since you've been working with Jason
for so long, he was definitely, you know, that Remedy team is a wicked powerhouse, right, between you, Jason, and David. And so a big, big shout out to Jason,
all the work that he's done. And so, okay, so talk to me about GingerScience. So now you've
had the chance to kind of scale back a little bit on, at least from the infrastructure perspective
for now. Now I see you, so you launched GingerScience. I also know that you're advising
for Curetopia. I had a wonderful conversation with Ethan the other day with regards to rare disease
applications, and we're going to be working with him from the amino chain side, potentially.
How did Ginger Science come about? So you mentioned that you saw a bunch of redheads,
and now that Josh is here, I'd love to hear you kind of just reiterate that at Denver.
But what's the goal with Ginger Science?
Well, you know, what we're trying to do is utilize Web3 technology, which gives us a mechanism that never existed before to see redheads as a population that can actually, you know, be studied and have agency for themselves.
You know, we're oddities. We know a lot of
anecdotal evidence about us. But, you know, just like with rare diseases, there's not a lot of
ROI because we're not sick. We're soups. We, you know, we're mutants. We have superpowers.
We, you know, we're mutants. We have superpowers. And it comes with a few drawbacks, like we're more likely to get skin cancer. And the rest of y'all think we're weird.
I can personally attest that my good friend here is a very strange man, but I don't know if that's his gingerness or some other thing but okay
that well that i guess that's that speaks there right so i mean in line with the idea that
in science in the biomedical industry we have so few reference genomes that are or reference bases
that are really truly representative of different groups and clusters and enclaves of what makes up
humanity i guess it's not as surprising that that holds true for things like
gingers or I don't know what,
what's the official term for,
I guess the enclave of individuals that present as being ginger.
There's really redheads.
I mean,
all my life I've called myself a redhead.
I've discovered that other people use the word gingers.
Cause I guess I came from Europe. Yeah.
On TikTok now, we're calling ourselves red velvets because that's better.
Somebody called me a paprika princess the other day, and I love that.
I love that, Josh.
Your new name is paprika princess.
That's great.
That's going to stick.
I love that one.
Okay.
So then what is it that,
so I mean, on the Ginger Science website, you mentioned MCR1 as a particular genetic target.
Can we go a little bit into that as why that is the particular focus?
Sure. MC1R is a melinocortin-1 receptor that all of us have.
But redheads have a mutant version of that,
or mutated version of that,
which makes the melanin that we express
different from the melanin that the rest of y'all express.
The rest of y'all make this eomelanin
that is sort of a nice, is that tan melanin that
you see, and it protects you from sun damage. We make pheomelanin, which is this coppery color
and, you know, the freckles that you see, and it doesn't protect us very well.
it doesn't protect us very well. So, you know, we don't know if the MC1R gene variant alone
is what causes all these other things we see about redheads. We need more anesthesia.
We're more sensitive to heat and cold, but we have a higher pain tolerance.
more sensitive to heat and cold, but we have a higher pain tolerance. There's evidence out of
Colorado that maybe that's not actually directly related to our hair color, but instead a
constellation variation that comes along with it. So these are the things that we need to drill down
on because it actually makes a difference in our care. For example, you hear stories of people waking up on the
operating table. There's a really good chance that person is a redhead. Okay. You know,
every time I go to the dentist, my doctor laughs and loads up an extra syringe of no cane or my,
and loads up an extra syringe of no cane.
So it's, you know, these are real things,
but we don't really know why.
Also, one of the phenomenons,
I guess I could drill down on this a little bit,
is that because redheads are rare in their own families
and in the societies in which they live. We have been
persistently othered, even if nobody meant to do it, all of our lives. And so that takes a
significant toll on your mental health and on your physical health. And it doesn't help that fact
that, you know, it keeps y'all thinking we're weird, ornery, we have tempers, all these kind of things. So some of the things we want to drill down on are to begin to create knowledge graphs around the experiences that redheads have had in real life, collect some data and make sure that we get included in the research data sets going forward.
So to make things like that happen, we're collaborating with folks like Spectrethel, a lot of biosciences.
You know, a lot of biosciences has two redheads on senior management, of course.
And Spectreth, we're talking about, we're planning an IP NFT. So right now I've got
a build going on. It'll be finished this week in a hackathon. And the end result of the hackathon
are going to be some IPF NFTs. And with Spectruth, I think what we're going to do is create an IP NFT around this idea that in general, the redhead population has an endemic mild PTSD.
Spend a little time on TikTok and watch us cry.
It's so wild.
I'm about to get choked up.
So, and so we're going to collect some data around that with an IP NFT.
But most importantly, or maybe more importantly, you know, these things that we can explore kind of quickly and simply in a low risk way with the redheads.
So maybe they can help the folks in Ukraine who got it.
It's hard to grow up with red hair,
but it's way harder to be in Ukraine.
So, you know, those are the kind of things
we're looking at doing.
If anybody knows Dermdow, I'd love to meet them.
I haven't met them yet,
but I learned about them when y'all were in Berlin.
So those are kind of the folks that we would like to make sure
that we get redheads included in their data sets and their initiatives.
This is fantastic because you're taking, I mean,
a very cross-sectional approach within DSI
for something that probably has inherent cross-sectionality within it, right?
You can, you know, you're a redhead or you're designated as a redhead or paprika princess which i like now um but you also are i'm
sure have healthy and non-healthy and the impact of these kind of cross-sectionalities as it relates
to that it's probably something that is not studied as per what you've explained to me i'm
sure it's not been studied and so you're kind of going to be manifesting a very unique data set.
And as we all understand, data is effectively liquid gold in this age that we're living in.
So that's fantastic.
I'd love to hear you working with a number of different DSI projects because to me, and I guess you can weigh in on this as well, Nina, because you've been around for a while and you're looking at this.
Like that's one of the things I feel like we're missing in the whole DSi space, even though it's kind of within the name itself is these
composable infrastructures, or at least there's composables, communities
and infrastructures that kind of all band together to kind of support and
bring something to scale so that it can reach some level of, if not parody,
but then closeness to what the traditional legacy system is like.
So it's great to see that you're, you're doing that and working with
some, some cool folks.
I love James.
He's, He's fantastic. I'm really living the sort of blockchain smart contracts
Lego dream that we've been talking about for years. I mean, I'm able to snap, you know,
I've just been thinking about this so long. I'm able to snap the components together really quickly.
And then execution wise, I don't know if we're gonna talk
about that yet or in a few more minutes about how, how I've been
managing to get some of these things done.
No, that's exactly what I was gonna go to because I mean, it's,
it's well and good, but maybe from a slightly different angle.
So I definitely want to hear what your perspective is on this, but I'd
love to really look at the gaps that haven't been completed yet.
Right.
Um, and what may, what effectively is missing?
Cause that can help maybe inform either new projects or existing projects as a call to
action to say, okay, well we can come in and support here, but please the mic is yours.
How have you actually managed to weave these things together in, into something tangible
or prospectively tangible? Well, I mean, a is just thinking about it for a long time. But B is, you know, I've got a few toolkits that I work with that I'm real comfortable with over the years.
There's a code base maintained by a DAO out of Wyoming called Scaffold ETH2.
Y'all might be familiar with the Biddle Giddle.
Yeah.
I use their front end because it's got so many,
I mean, it doesn't look like legal tech to most people,
but to me, I see that as a bunch of legal tech primitives
that they've got built out for me already.
And then I know it's well-maintained by cracky devs.
So A, I prototype with, I don't reinvent the wheel.
That way I can focus on customizing smart contracts and figuring out where the data and the legal compliance and legal operations go.
where the data and the legal compliance and legal operations go.
But since I just like came, you know, came up with this idea,
like March 1st would be when I really started working on it.
The way that I have been keeping myself on track and deadline oriented is working through hackathons.
So first I worked through the base hackathon
to build out some smart contracts on base.
Then I worked through the bio hackathon
to build out some process controls
that would be managed by an AI agent. And now we're working on taking
the knowledge graphs and hypotheses engines and things like that that we've built,
and the bio protocol hackathon, and then working in chain link hackathon to take like the NFTs, which are living on places
like Base, Solana. We've got some compliance that's been living on avalanche forever.
So we're going to mint some of these hypothesis and NFTs on chain link. What I'll tell you is I
could not have done all of this myself where we are right now. I was super, super blessed during the BioProtocol Hackathon to meet a developer who's here in this call, Akshay Gaurav.
the ideas that I had that, you know, were often kind of complex and just turned them into
beautiful pieces of code that just sang, evidence-based. And he was able to do it sometimes
in minutes. So it's really been wonderful to work with him. He's a data scientist.
He was able to help me figure out how we would take all of these diverse data sets and all the
things that are interesting about Redheads and put them into an engine that can be queried.
And then now we're going to get those so we can mint them into IPF NFTs and begin to get these projects funded.
in India, he's getting ready to graduate, is he, I've worked with a lot of great intuitive
implementers of complex processes over the years. But as I was working with him, not only
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