Step 3: Connect B2B and B2C Users

Linking consumers and professionals enables the both casual and serious at-home users to contribute towards meaningful science and receive appropriate credit and compensation. Programs like Foldit and Folding at Home revealed great interest in amateur science collaboration, but a critical piece of the ecosystem was lacking: a strong mechanism for incentives. Consequentlyt, Foldit & Folding at Home garnered substantial initial attention and usage upon launch, but interest has since waned. As the first iteration of crowdsourced molecular science via the internet, users donated their computing power and time to simulate protein interactions. Motivated exclusively by a game-ification mechanism, users’ interest declined. The process was much like mining Bitcoin without the reward, or “altruistic” BitTorrent seeding. (Decentralized apps like IPFS + Storj now incentivize storing other people’s files.)

Matryx Platform Design

An anecdotal case study demonstrating the need to connect B2B and B2C users is based out of the aforementioned UBPC2. This top pharmaceutical company has a robotic drug manufacturing plant in Southern California. When a professional on the East Coast goes on a terminal and types a chemical formula for a drug, these robots quickly manufacture the drug remotely. There are two critical elements to consider:

1) Instead of typing in a chemical formula of a drug, designers want to model the drug using Nanome’s VR software, and have it exported directly to the manufacturing facility.

2) In avoidance of idle robots, Eli Lilly is looking for independent researchers to port into the facility. Furthermore, Eli Lilly could receive royalties from revenue on the independent researchers’ formulas. Initially, the company will open this opportunity to universities and smaller biotech firms, eventually expanding to the public.

The bottleneck for innovation in pharma is no longer the manufacturing of the drug itself, but the ideation of nanoscale designs. And, of arguably greater significance, it should be noted there is currently no efficient way to keep track of who creates what.

Big Pharma’s advantage is size and capital. This is what enables them to use X-ray crystallography to scan and digitize protein samples. (These are the “locks” and “active sites” used for Matryx bounties). They also have the monetary infrastructure to manufacture, clinically trial, and distribute these drugs en masse. They don’t have an army of people designing and iterating at the nanoscale.

The Ideal User Narrative (for initial vertical with biotech)

Big Pharma company/NIH/University digitizes a protein via X-ray crystallography and publishes that protein as a bounty on the Matryx platform. Someone at home who has a VR headset can find or be assigned to a bounty (3D lock, or protein) and designs and submits a solution (key, or a small molecule drug) using Nanome’s VR products. In the short term, this can be a university researcher, but in the long term let’s say the target demographic is someone who currently drives Uber for supplemental income. The designer of a winning a solution is compensated immediately at the end of the round in MTX. A pharma company manufactures the drug, runs it through clinical trials, and brings it to market. Both the pharma company and the solution poster share revenue.

Eventually, these transaction, compensation, and IP logics will be fully automated through smart contracts and cryptocurrencies. In the immediate future, the Matryx blockchain will serve as immutable proof of user creations.

The Nanome Stack

Our VR products and our blockchain platform are not separate items that work independently. They are a part of the Nanome Stack and work together to democratize science.

Timeline and Logistics

In the short term, we’ve already made progress bringing this user story to life via nonprofit organizations and universities. UC San Diego already utilizes our interfaces, and we hope to see their research placed onto the Matryx platform in the next 1~3 years. In the medium term (3~5 years), we anticipate Big Pharma companies, like UBPC2, crowdsourcing their designs to smaller biotech firms and universities. And in the long term (5+ years), we aim to have the “Uber demographic” entering the nanoscale design industry.

Data in Pharma and Private Blockchains

Privacy of pharma data is extremely sensitive, especially when it comes to a drug’s chemical formula that has potential to make billions in revenue.

This is why we envision:

1) University & Nonprofit organizations as initial adopters…

2) …and Private Matryx implementations as short terms solutions in Big Pharma.

Currently, the planet’s largest library of proteins is the Worldwide Protein Databank. This library hosts tens of thousands of protein files, including proteins currently in undergoing public researched. At the start, most Matryx bounties will involve already-public proteins. The transition to ‘proprietary proteins’ will occur over the long term. It’s not unusual for Big Pharma companies to have their non profit arms do collaborative public research with other organizations. The option to crowd/out-source the design of a small molecule drug is a coming feature of Nanome VR software.

IP at UC San Diego: Working w/ the Office of Innovation

Many Universities are creating Intellectual Property that is vastly underutilized and sits deep in the coffers of their ‘tech transfer’ department. UC San Diego, as one of the first Matryx Affiliates, is currently exploring ways to commercialize the Matryx IP blockchain- an optimal use case for the Matryx platform’s IP-hashing and royalty-sharing features.

In addition to preexisting IP, UC San Diego is interested in working with Nanome to crowdsource research on Matryx in exchange for shared IP rights. Due to their public nature, X-ray crystallography included with bounties will necessitate shared IP. Additionally, Nanome’s current customers at UC San Diego’s Skaggs School of Pharmacy are optimizing the effectiveness of the Matryx platform and catalyzing industry adoption.

Conclusion

I hope the Nanome User Story helps the public and our community better see Matryx as a building, not just bricks. Please share your thoughts with our team on Twitter and Telegram. As always, questions are welcomed.