Alok Tayi, PhD, Founder and CEO of Vibe Bio, gives an overview of his company, its mission and objectives, and how it plans to advance the development of rare disease therapies.
As Dr. Tayi explains, he founded Vibe Bio after his daughter was hospitalized at birth with conditions that were well understood biologically but did not have approved targeted therapies. Through this experience, Dr. Tayi learned that the biggest obstacle to developing treatments is funding potential therapies.
Using a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) model – in which, the organization is community-led – Vibe Bio has been able to build a network of patients, scientists, and shareholders where members have the power to vote on rare disease research proposals, as well as nominate specific diseases or candidate medicines, to pursue through its $VIBE cryptocurrency token. It also allows patients to speak more directly with scientists and stakeholders about their needs.
One organization that Vibe Bio has partnered with is Chelsea’s Hope, a patient advocacy organization dedicated to curing Lafora disease. Lafora disease is an inherited, severe form of progressive myoclonus epilepsy that presents in children and adolescents. Through this collaboration, New Hope Therapeutics has been launched and is currently developing a large molecule biologic to advance treatment of Lafora disease. This drug is under preclinical investigation.
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