>such a rushed and heavily marketed product)
Rushed? Not so much.
Still searching for the connections, but you might like to read these articles.
MODERNA/GATES/FLAGSHIP/CIA/DARPA all connected to this mRNA crap years ago.
Throughout 2009 and 2010, Stéphane Bancel (MBA 2000) had received upward of 20 calls from biotech companies asking him to come aboard and lead the company. It made sense. He was a highly recruited CEO successfully running bioMérieux, a diagnostics company with 6,000 employees and sales reaching into the billions. Then one evening he got a call from Noubar Afeyan, managing partner and CEO of Flagship Ventures, a venture capital firm that started Moderna, asking Bancel to swing by the company's Boston office and take a look at the latest data coming in on their patented technology, messenger RNA (mRNA) Therapeutics.
https://www.alumni.hbs.edu/stories/Pages/story-bulletin.aspx?num=3170
Flagship, led by co-founders Noubar Afeyan and Ed Kania, is an early-stage venture capital firm with more than $600 million in funds and a portfolio of 40 companies. It focuses on startups in therapeutics; life science tools and diagnostics; bioenergy; and cleantech. Earlier this month, medical diagnostics startup T2 Biosystems Inc. secured a $10.8 million second round of venture capital from Flagship Ventures, along with fellow Series A investor Polaris Venture Partners and new investors Flybridge Capital Partners, Partners Healthcare Inc. andCIA venture arm In-Q-Tel.
https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/mass-high-tech/2008/10/greene-flies-from-flagship-to-valhalla.html
Moderna Wins Initial $20M Grant from Gates Foundation
https://www.genengnews.com/topics/omics/moderna-wins-initial-20m-grant-from-gates-foundation/
Then, in October, the government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Moderna $25 million to develop mRNA to combat infectious diseases and biological threats.
https://www.alumni.hbs.edu/stories/Pages/story-bulletin.aspx?num=3170