Amazon is working with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to develop cancer vaccines, according to a filing.
Amazon is listed as a collaborator on a filing for an FDA-approved clinical trial, which seeks to develop personalized vaccines to treat breast and skin cancers.
All about Amazon’s cancer vaccines
Amazon and Fred Hutchinson are looking to recruit 20 participants over the age of 18 for the phase 1 trial, according to a filing on clinicaltrials.gov, a database of clinical trials run by the National Library of Medicine.
They will develop personalized vaccines to fight melanoma, a type of skin cancer, and breast cancer.
According to the filing, Fred Hutchinson is the sponsor of the study and Amazon is listed as a collaborator.
“Amazon is contributing scientific and machine learning expertise to a partnership with Fred Hutch to explore the development of a personalized treatment for certain forms of cancer,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement.
“It’s very early, but Fred Hutch recently received permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to proceed with a Phase I clinical trial, and it’s unclear whether it will be successful. This will be a long, multi-year process — should it progress, we would be open to working with other organizations in health care and life sciences that might also be interested in similar efforts.”
Additionally, the project came out from Grand Challenge, Amazon’s secretive moonshot lab. A small group of medical doctors and engineers from health tech are said to be involved in it. The study began on June 9 and the trial is due to complete by November 2023. 20 patients will participate in the first phase of the trial for a ‘US FDA-regulated Drug Product’.
Amazon and healthcare
According to Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, the move is a top priority and they believe it will become a ‘significant disruptor’. However, the cancer vaccine is years away from launching as it has to pass through strict FDA trials which takes several years.