In 2009, life sciences represented 60% of scientific academic research expenditures. Much of this money was spent on high priced materials sold exclusively through big corporations who charge these high prices due to the absence of a competitive market. The patents on many frequently used and in-demand life science materials have expired, yet these big corporations are still able to charge researchers as if the materials and protocols for producing them are proprietary because no secondary, generic market exists.
These materials are easy and inexpensive to produce: with minimal effort and overhead, a thousand dollars worth of proteins can be produced overnight with a long shelf life and equivalent quality to the brand-name version sold by big corporations.
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We seek to create this secondary marketplace: to provide scientists with the information to grow proteins and the infrastructure to sell it to fellow scientists looking for equivalent but less expensive materials.
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