Linum Labs, a software development studio that builds blockchain-based solutions, has announced Molecule, a market platform to accelerate innovation in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry.

Molecule connects scientists, patients, and industry in order to advance drug development in a collaborative open market. By creating an open market for participants to crowdfund and discover promising therapeutics, it aims to solve core issues in the industry’s current business and innovation model.

“The pharmaceutical industry faces an innovation crisis caused by the challenges around drug development and the monopolisation of IP,” says Paul Kohlhaas, CEO of Linum Labs. “Bringing a drug to market is a high-cost, high-risk, and slow endeavour, and it is generally large organisations that single-handedly shoulder these burdens, leading to unnecessarily high prices and a friction around innovation.”

“These large organisations also shelve any IP that is perceived to have less revenue potential or difficult and costly development paths. This has had a significant negative effect on innovation in the pharmaceutical industry, which has moved away from a high-risk pioneering approach. Instead, we have a low-risk high-ticket size environment where R&D is reduced and only ‘blockbuster drugs’ get approved for development, regardless of their potential impact on overall societal health and wellbeing.”

Molecule aims to transform the pharma industry by providing a platform for crowdsourcing funding and research, reducing risk for investors and IP creators while creating more diverse and inclusive treatments for patients and consumers.

Swiss-based Linum Labs AG began developing Molecule in early 2018 and intends to build out the platform as an open source industry initiative on behalf of the Molecule Foundation, a Swiss non-profit.

The next phase of development will include testing with an early user cohort and further iterations of the initial prototype, leading into a minimum viable product. This will be supported by a financing round due to start in Q2 2019.

The organisation is currently hiring and seeking interested parties to contribute towards an open source ecosystem accelerating innovation in drug development.

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