Martin Shkreli is photographed for his role as CIO of MSMB Capital Management.
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Martin Shkreli — the infamous ex-pharmaceutical executive fresh from prison after his 2017 fraud conviction — announced his latest, eyebrow-raising venture Monday: creating a blockchain-based “Web3 drug discovery platform” that trades in its own cryptocurrency, MSI, as well known as Martin. Shkreli Inu.
The platform, still in the early stages of development, is called Druglike, according to a press release circulated Monday. The platform’s goals are seemingly lofty, but details are extremely sketchy, and Shkreli’s intentions have already drawn skepticism. It is also unclear whether the company will run Shkreli into conflict with his lifetime ban from the pharmaceutical industry, which stemmed from the sudden and callous 4,000 percent price increase of a life-saving drug that made him notorious.
Shkreli, who is named as one of the founders of Narcotic-like, says the platform aims to make early-stage drug discovery more affordable and accessible. “Druglike will remove barriers to early drug discovery, increase innovation and allow a broader group of contributors to share in the rewards,” Shkreli said in the press release. “Underserved and underfunded communities, such as those focused on rare diseases or in developing markets, will also benefit from access to these tools.”
In general, early-stage drug development can sometimes involve virtual screens to identify potential drug candidates. In these cases, pharmaceutical researchers first identify a “target”—a specific compound or protein that plays a critical role in developing a disease or condition. Next, researchers look for compounds or small molecules that can interfere with that target, sometimes binding or “docking” directly to the target in a way that prevents it from working. This can be done in physical laboratories using massive libraries of compounds in high-throughput chemical screens. But it can also be done virtually, using specialized software and a lot of computing power, which can be resource-intensive.
Concepts and questions
That’s where Shkreli’s Druglike is envisioned to come in. In a whitepaper posted on Druglike’s website, Shkreli associate Jason Sommer lays out some concepts for how the company’s platform would work. Essentially, it will use a decentralized computer network of task providers, solvers and validators that will run and optimize the virtual screening of drug candidates. The whitepaper draws similarities to FoldIt, an online puzzle game that essentially uses distributed computing and crowdsourcing to fold proteins and predict their structures.
But Druglike’s platform is touted as incorporating blockchain concepts and cryptocurrency transactions when users complete tasks, such as docking screens. For example, the paper describes a “proof-of-optimization” concept as a “new” blockchain-based verification step for screening work similar to Bitcoin’s “proof-of-work” method.
“We propose a blockchain-based implementation of Proof-of-Optimization, where a distributed ledger stores records of which proof solutions belong to which Solvers. Smart contracts allow secure distribution of rewards to the Solver who owns the verified proof,” writes Sommer in the newspaper.
But for now, the whitepaper only describes these concepts loosely, and it is unclear how the cryptocurrency transactions will generate value. It is also unclear how the project will be financed, although an online stock exchange suggested that the company could look like for risk capital financing.
On Twitter, where Shkreli is banned, he currently has an account as Enrique Hernandez @zkEnrique7. From there, Shkreli announced the company on Monday and host a conversation about the project.
In that conversation, he scoffed at the idea that the platform would break his lifetime ban from the pharmaceutical industry, saying the project only involves developing software, not drugs. “Writing some code in Github and hitting ‘go’ doesn’t make you a pharmaceutical company,” he said.
