Indysci Founder Isaac Yonemoto: ‘I Was Presented with a Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity to Develop a Drug without Patents’

As we reported last week, Indysci is a new project funds open-source scientific projects that anyone can look at, modify, or use. The first project on the agenda, dubbed Project Marilyn, will pour donations into research for a patent-less cure for cancer.
The organization accepts Bitcoin, and if they receive enough Bitcoin donations, they will name an anticancer drug after Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto: Satoshimycin. Basically, Bitcoin donations are helping along scientific crowdfunding site with a non-traditional fundraising bent.
Now CoinTelegraph had an opportunity to explore Isaac Yonemoto’s, PhD, personal vision Indysci, Bitcoin along with the new opportunities offered by cryptocurrencies for scientific funding.
CoinTelegraph: What’s your background? What prompted Indysci?
Isaac Yonemoto: I’m a PhD chemist – I founded indysci to complete a project that I had worked on that wound up abandoned because my previous boss had quit. I’ve never been particularly fond of patents, so I was presented with a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to work on a project that would enable me to develop a drug without patents. Although it may seem unusual, quite a bit of early-stage drug development is done in nonprofits, namely universities, so I set up my own (indysci) to work on this project.
CT: Can you tell me a little bit about your interest in Bitcoin?
IY: I’ve been programming computers since age 6, and although I do chemistry, my undergraduate degree is in mathematics. Although I came to Bitcoin a bit late, the concept of a distributed trust model supported by cryptographic protocols fascinates me. I also think that having a less-inflationary money model makes for more charitable people in the long run. We’ve already seen how Bitcoin has enabled charitable operations like Sean’s Outpost; these organizations are a big inspiration to what I’m doing.

This post was published at Coin Telegraph on 2014-10-13.

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