Illinois Governor’s company profiting off of Covid vaccines?
Updated: Oct 31, 2021
I‘ll keep this short. Last year, we helped spearhead a massive story about Governor JB Pritzker and his companies that produced Covid tests. It got picked up by other outlets (but of course, the original Facebook post with all of the sources by a MAA ally and our article that put it together didn’t get the credit lol). Now, in a time in which the IL Governor and legislators are changing laws so it’s harder for people to object to vaccine mandates (big pharma donated heavily to IL politicians recently btw), it turns out one of Pritzker‘s companies is helping ramp up (and possible already has been) Covid vaccine production.
https://www.pritzkergroup.com/venture-capital/
https://www.pritzkergroup.com/portfolio/apprentice-io/
JERSEY CITY, N.J., Nov. 19, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Apprentice.io, an intelligent software company for life science manufacturing that is helping to increase the speed to market on a number of COVID-19 vaccines, announced today a $24M Series B round, led by Insight Partners. Pacific Western Bank, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, GFR Fund and The Venture Reality Fund also joined the round. This round brings Apprentice’s total capital to over $40M.
https://www.apprentice.io/how-apprentice-accelerated-covid-vaccine-development/
As the FDA advisory committee meets today to consider authorizing Johnson & Johnson’s COVID vaccine for emergency use, there is no better time to bring to light the immense challenges and hurdles so many life science manufacturing teams have faced throughout this last year. With unprecedented speed, global pharmaceutical leaders and their teams raced to develop an effective vaccine during what has been a truly devastating pandemic. We are eager to see this potential third vaccine join the ranks with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. If cleared, it would be the only one to provide protection with a single dose, which may help expedite inoculation efforts as virus variants continue to spread.
It’s important to note that pharma, in general, has seen major changes over the years, advancing drug development from easy-to-manufacture pills, to biologics and personalized medicine. This increase in complexity and demand has encouraged the life sciences industry to look beyond outdated, traditional approaches, toward more advanced, intelligent technology that can better handle these new processes and the challenges that go along with them.
Click here to listen in as Apprentice CEO breaks down these complex processes, discusses the significance of modern and flexible intelligent platforms paired with pharma-specific remote collaboration, and what it was like for Apprentice to help the world’s leading life science teams develop COVID vaccine candidates.
Our global Apprentice teams are so honored and proud to be a part of the development and manufacturing of today’s critical drug products, treatments and therapeutics. We are committed to helping life science teams improve their processes and and increase speed to market so that safe, reliable treatments get to the people who need them the most.
https://startupsavant.com/news/apprenticeio-pharma
Apprentice, a software startup in the pharmaceuticals market, recently announced $24 million in funding in its Series B round. The New Jersey company is planning to use its new capabilities to support COVID-19 vaccine production.
The vaccine manufacturing challenge is significant. According to the New York Times, "Pfizer and BioNTech expect to manufacture over 1.3 billion doses of their vaccine worldwide by the end of 2021." Also, there is incredible pressure on vaccine makers to produce vaccines at speed. Therefore, Apprentice's ability to help companies speed up their manufacturing processes will become necessary.
https://twitter.com/apprentice_io/status/1338937138310754304?s=20