“In pursuit of a solution, Alok founded a company called Vibe Bio that enables funding for high potential drug programmes, especially in rare diseases. Through a community of patients, scientists, and partners, Vibe Bio’s goal is to identify the most promising candidates for a disease and ensure they receive enough funding to surpass their inflection points.”
“The experience stuck with Tayi, who is a scientist and entrepreneur, and led him to co-found a new organization that’s designed to allow patients, scientists, and other experts to have a say in financing rare disease drug development. The organization, Vibe Bio, launched on Wednesday with $12 million in seed funding.”
“There actually ends up being a myriad of different candidate medicines with promise that are sitting on shelves today, but simply lack the capital and the focus to be able to develop them.”
“The company [Vibe Bio] has launched two biotech companies in partnership with two foundations: Chelsea’s Hope, which is focused on Lafora disease, a fatal form of progressive myoclonus epilepsy, and NF2 BioSolutions, which hopes to accelerate a gene therapy for neurofibromatosis Type 2, which causes the growth of noncancerous tumors in the nervous system.”
“The obstacle for all of us was that there wasn’t the funding to advance research. The challenge in finding a potential cure is not finding it, it’s funding it … Many of these families are relegated to either the generosity of billionaires or running a bunch of bake sales.”
“Tayi is a scientist with a background in materials science and extensive experience in the biotech industry — among the speakers at this week’s upcoming SynBioBeta conference. After a postdoc with Harvard scientist George Whitesides, he went on to found a series of software companies with a focus on the life sciences and over $100 million in venture funding.”