Ep. 100: Decentralizing Pay-for-Success Models - Savva Kerdemelidis and Nicholas Fiorenza (Crowd Funded Cures)

Savva Kerdemelidis is the CEO and Founder of Crowd Funded Cures (CFC), a non-profit initiative funded by the Prize Charitable Trust. Aiming to renovate the broken system of medical innovation, CFC creates an open source incentivization of clinical trials for off-patent drugs. In this episode, Savva Kerdemelidis, along with Nicholas Fiorenza, CFC’s Head of Business Development & Operations, talk about the main market failures of the medical patent system and how Crowd Funded Cures addresses these failures in ways that ultimately transform how traditional science is done. 

Topics Covered

• How Savva and Nick first got interested in the idea of decentralized science (DeSci) & its importance in solving scientific challenges through collaboration. 
• Savva and Nick share their original reason for starting Crowd Funded Cures and its current operations. 
• The challenges they faced and the pushbacks often heard by people in the scientific academic community. 
• How the pay-for-success contracts work as an alternative to the traditional patent system and its benefits in the field of academic science.
• What IP NFT is and its advantage to the clinical field and as well as to investors.
• Why DeSci is important for the psychedelic space and how important psychedelic research is going to be for science DAOs.

Connect with Savva

• LinkedIn
• @newzealandlaw / Twitter 
• Crowd Funded Cures 

Connect with Nick

• LinkedIn
• @nfiorenza / Twitter
• Moleculetter - Blog

Resources Mentioned

• VitaDAO - Longevity DAO 
• Molecule Protocol Home | A New Era of Drug Development
• Open Source Pharma Foundation - Medicine for all
• Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) 
• National Health Service (NHS) 

News Corner

UNOS transplant network depends on out-of-date technology - The Washington Post

In a recent exclusive story by the Washington Post, investigators reveal that the entire organ transportation and IT infrastructure needs a major overhaul. In January of 2021, theWhite House’s U.S. Digital Service recommended that the government “break up the current monopoly” that oversees what is formally known as the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network.

That monopoly the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit agency that operates the transplant system, has held for 36 years and worth more than $200million, funded mainly by fees patients pay to be listed for transplants. It is a complex collection of about 250 transplant-performing hospitals; 57 government-chartered nonprofits that collect organs in their regions; labs that test organs for compatibility and disease; and other auxiliary services.

The mechanics of the entire transplant system must be overhauled, the review concluded, citing aged software, periodic system failures, mistakes in programming and over reliance on manual input of data.

Health Unchained Links 

Website: https://healthunchained.org/

Telegram: t.me/healthunchained

Twitter: twitter.com/Healthunchaind