Major venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has invested in its first 'DeSci' project, AminoChain, a decentralized biobank platform that uses blockchain technology to bring ownership, transparency, and consent to medical data collection. AminoChain aims to connect medical institutions and enable the sharing of medical data while preserving patient privacy. The platform will also feature a peer-to-peer marketplace for bio-samples called the Specimen Center. AminoChain has raised a total of $7 million in funding.

Major venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has invested in its first "DeSci" (as in "decentralized science") project — AminoChain, according to a16z General Partner Arriana Simpson on X. A16z led the $5 million seed round announced on Wednesday.The project is looking to bring “ownership, transparency, and consent” into the field of medical data collection using blockchain technology. AminoChain is building a “decentralized biobank” and Layer 2 network that will connect enterprise medical institutions looking to share medical data while preserving patient privacy, Simpson said.According to AminoChain’s website, medical institutions can install “Amino Node” software and integrate it with its existing tech stack. “While data stays self-custodial on the given institutions' servers, the Node software harmonizes and standardizes the data into a common format, making it interoperable with a network of collaborators,” the startup said.“The Node software thereby sources data from all providers and brings credible neutrality to the network; from this basis, developers can source data from a multitude of medical bodies and build any number of patient-centric applications,” AminoChain continued.Decentralized science, or DeSci, refers to the use of blockchain to make various aspects of scientific research and collaboration more open, incentivized and community-driven.The first application that will be built on AminoChain will be a peer-to-peer marketplace for “bio-samples” called the Specimen Center, which will house an inventory of research samples of human tissue potentially useful for scientific research.“With Specimen Center, biobanks can now give permission for researchers and collaborators to query their sample collections, and they can equally query for research assets available to them. Between institutions, users can streamline licensing agreements, track sample and data use, and maintain full provenance of biosamples across an interoperable network of biobanks,” the company said.AminoChain previously raised $2 million in pre-seed financing, bringing its total raised to date to $7 million.

A16z Invests in Decentralized Biobank Platform AminoChain