Will Amazon also compete with Big Pharma with cancer vaccines?
Amazon is collaborating with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle to create personalized vaccines for breast and skin cancers. Could his entry into the health sector become a "major disruptive factor" as they say from the inside?
Amazon, in collaboration with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, is said to be developing vaccines for breast and skin cancers (skin melanoma). The preparation, cheaper than current treatments, will be tested through a clinical study approved by the Food and Drug Administration (Fda).
THE PARTNERSHIP
News of the partnership, first revealed in October on Clinicaltrials.gov , an online database of clinical trials maintained by the US National Library of Medicine, has now been released by Business Insider , who writes: “while Fred Hutchinson is listed as sponsor of the trial, Amazon is indicated as a 'collaborator' of the study ".
Both Fred Hutchinson and Amazon confirmed they are working together on the trial, and the company added that it is also partnering with other health care companies.
THE PROJECT
Jeff Bezos' giant , together with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, therefore wants to create vaccines against skin and breast cancers. The company, the article reads, has already started recruiting patients who will undergo a trial that has received FDA approval.
20 patients will participate in the first phase of the clinical trial to test a "pharmaceutical product regulated by the US FDA".
The ambition is to offer treatments that are not only cheaper than the current ones but also more targeted and precise since they would be personalized vaccines based on the patient's DNA. If the results were positive, it could even be a good alternative to chemotherapy, which is more generalized.
Phase I will be completed by November 2023, but it is likely that it will take several years to arrive on the market due to rigorous FDA testing.
THE ROLE OF AMAZON IN THE PROJECT
An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that the company “is contributing science and machine learning expertise to a partnership with Fred Hutch to explore the development of a personalized treatment for certain forms of cancer. It is very early, but Fred Hutch recently received clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration to proceed with a Phase I clinical trial and it is unclear whether it will be successful.
“It will be a long and multi-year process; if it were to progress, – he added – we would be open to collaborate with other organizations in the health and life sciences sectors that could be interested in similar efforts ”.
This is the first time Amazon has been working on its own drug, although the company has recently shown a greater interest in healthcare.
THE SECRET LABORATORY OF AMAZON
The cancer vaccine project, reports Business Insider , was born out of Amazon's secret laboratory called the Grand Challenge or – as it is internally called according to The Verge who talked about it in 2018 – 1492 and Amazon X.
Amazon's cancer research team is made up of a small group of doctors and engineers from the healthcare industry. The study only started last month, June 9, and is expected to be completed in early November 2023.
OTHER AMAZON INITIATIVES IN THE HEALTHCARE SECTOR
Recently, Amazon also launched an online pharmacy service, a primary care business, an in-house diagnostic lab, and a fitness-tracking device called the Halo.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told Business Insider that the company's entry into the medical care industry is a top priority and could become a "major disruptive factor."
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/amazon-fara-concorrenza-anche-alle-big-pharma-con-i-vaccini-contro-i-tumori/ on Tue, 12 Jul 2022 08:16:28 +0000.