Martin Shkreli launches 'drug discovery platform' just two months after being released from prison

'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli is launching a new online drug discovery platform just two months after being released from prison for committing securities fraud and defrauding investors.

Shkreli, 39, is most well-known for purchasing and raising the price of live-saving anti-parasitic and HIV/AIDS medication Daraprim from $13.50 to $750.

The Pharma bro was convicted in 2017 on two counts of two counts of defrauding investors at hedge funds and one count of conspiring to commit securities fraud for manipulating stock shares of his pharmaceutical company.

Now having only served a little over four years of his seven year sentence, Shkreli is living in a halfway house and dipping his toes back into the pharmaceutical world - this time through web3 technology.

Shkreli's new business venture, Druglike, is a platform that "seeks to democratize and disrupt the current in silico computational chemistry software industry by offering pharmaceutical researchers, students, and activists access to computational resources and a marketplace to securely work together to create new molecules."

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Using blockchain technology, Druglike, supposedly helps people in pharmaceuticals discover new drugs without having to pay for expensive "traditional drug discovery software".

"We started Druglike because in our experience, traditional drug discovery software is too difficult and expensive to use," Shkreli said in a 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."

However many people felt it was a bad sign that Shkreli was getting involved in web3, mocking him online.

In January, a federal judge barred Shkreli from the pharmaceutical industry for the rest of his life. However Druglike is apparently "a blockchain/Web3 software company and not a pharmaceutical company" as the company does not engage "in pharmaceutical research or drug development."

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