Ambrosus, the world’s first trusted Blockchain-based ecosystem for the supply chain, today announced a partnership with pharmaceutical pioneer Trek Therapeutics, PBC (Trek) to apply integrated sensors coupled with Blockchain-based technology to pharmaceutical drug manufacturing in Trek’s clinical development program. This announcement comes as Blockchain industry heavyweight Jaron Lukasiewicz joins Ambrosus as Strategic Advisor.

Combining high-tech sensors, Blockchain, and powered by smart contracts, Ambrosus is building the world’s first publicly-verifiable, community-driven ecosystem to ensure the quality, safety, and origins of essential products, such as medicine, food and commodities. As part of the collaboration, Ambrosus will conduct pilot projects with Trek to monitor the quality, safety and integrity of all stages of the pharmaceutical manufacturing process.

Trek Co-founder and CEO Dr. Ann Kwong said:

“Currently the pharmaceutical manufacturing process is highly regulated by pharmaceutical manufacturers and by regulatory authorities in an extremely labor-intensive and expensive manner. We hope to partner with Ambrosus to create a continuous monitoring and tracking system that will be less labor intensive, less expensive, and more transparent to all parties with a stake in quality pharmaceutical manufacturing.  Our goal is to develop a system that is robust enough that Trek can submit data to support our manufacturing application for regulatory approval of our drugs from the FDA and EMA authorities.”

“Additionally, patients currently have no way to ascertain the quality of the medicines they ingest. Trek believes it is important to be able to demonstrate to patients that while our drugs are affordable, they’re also of the highest quality,” Dr Kwong added.

Ambrosus Co-Founder and CEO Angel Versetti said, “Following the successful implementation of the Ambrosus protocol in global food supply chains, we are delighted to now apply our Blockchain protocol to help ensure the quality, safety and integrity of another vitally important product – pharmaceuticals.”

Trek Therapeutics, PBC is a privately-held, public-benefit corporation developing treatments for serious infections. Its mission is to provide cost-effective, affordable, and accessible medicines to treat patients that suffer from infectious diseases and commercialize them for global populations. Since the company’s founding in 2014, Trek has raised US$10M in Series A funding. Trek’s management team and board of directors is comprised of seasoned drug-development executives from Vertex, Schering Plough/Merck, Pharmasset/Gilead, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Roche, Celgene Global Health, Idenix, and Genzyme.

“Trek is focused on developing safe, novel medicines for infectious diseases at affordable and accessible prices. The pharmaceutical supply chain encompasses many phases and a multitude of stakeholders, requiring responsible parties to seek new methods of guaranteeing the quality and integrity of critical products. As Trek continues their mission to develop pharmaceuticals for budget-constrained patients across North America and Europe, our partnership will help to develop protocols to provide transparency and quality assurance during each phase of the process,” added Versetti.

As part of the pilot projects, Ambrosus’s protocol will work to verify and track the entire manufacturing chain from the primary chemical starting materials through multiple steps of synthesis, purification, and verification of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API); followed by formulation of the API into drug product; packaging, labeling, storage, and shipping to clinical trial sites.

“Backed by a superb core team of developers, advisors, and researchers, Ambrosus’ protocol will provide the transparency necessary in our manufacturing process to help ensure the integrity of supply chains. With our commitment to providing affordable high quality medicine, we believe this partnership could revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry quality control of manufacturing at every stage from plant to patient,” Dr. Kwong said.

Joining the Ambrosus team as an Advisor is Blockchain luminary Jaron Lukasiewicz. Speaking on the announcement, Versetti added:

“Ambrosus is excited to welcome Jaron Lukasiewicz as our Strategic Advisor. As a highly-respected Blockchain industry figure we are eager to utilize his invaluable expertise as we lead up to our September token sale and beyond.”

Jaron  Lukasiewicz  has  been  a  notable  bitcoin  and  Blockchain industry  figurehead  since  2012. Lukasiewicz  founded  and  served  as  CEO  of  Coinsetter,  a  New  York  City-based  bitcoin exchange,  which  was  acquired  by  Kraken,  the  world’s  largest  digital  asset  exchange  in  Euro volume,  in  January  2016.  The  sale  was,  at  the  time,  the  largest  M&A  deal  in  bitcoin  history. Lukasiewicz  also  served  as  CEO  of  Cavirtex  (Canadian  Virtual  Exchange),  the  oldest  and largest  Canadian  bitcoin  exchange,  which  was  also  acquired  by  Kraken  in  2016.  Since  the acquisition, Lukasiewicz has served as an active advisor to several Blockchain companies and Blockchain investment funds in addition to his role as the CEO of WRKFLOW.

Jaron Lukasiewicz said:

“I am excited about the future of the Ambrosus project and equally the team  behind  it,  who  together  carries  decades  of experience  in  their  target  markets.  Ambrosus can  become  a  fundamental  technology  utilized  in  sectors ranging from  food  to  pharma, stretching  the   boundaries of what  Blockchain  technology   can   accomplish   in   real world applications.”