Rare Daily Staff
The nonprofit Curetopia, a biotech decentralized autonomous organization, raised nearly $1.8 million last week to scale up drug repurposing for inherited metabolic diseases through the Bio Protocol Launchpad platform using crypto currency.
The funding will support research aimed at developing the first treatment for AARS2 deficiency, a potentially fatal rare genetic disease for which no approved therapies are currently on the market.
Curetopia’s approach empowers patients and researchers to crowdfund medical breakthroughs, emphasizing community involvement and a shared stake in the resulting advancements. More than 1,000 individual contributors participated in the $1.77 million financing. Participants in Curetopia’s decentralized clinical trials become active stakeholders in the therapies they help to develop.
A key outcome of the effort is the identification of two drug repurposing candidates for AARS2 Deficiency, uncovered by a fully de-risked, high-throughput, yeast-powered screening process. Curetopia is filing a provisional patent for this discovery, working with two AARS2 families on launching parallel N-of-1 studies.
“The success of Curetopia’s auction in the face of brutal market conditions speaks to the fact that rare disease communities and crypto communities are natural allies,” said Ethan Perlstein, founder and CEO of Curetopia. “We’ve already demonstrated with the inaugural AARS2 program that we can deliver results on a timeline and with capital efficiency that is unheard of in TradBio. Now it’s time to cook.”
Photo: Ethan Perlstein, founder and CEO of Curetopia
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