Amazon quietly developing vaccines for breast and skin cancer

Amazon is developing cancer vaccines in collaboration with Seattle-based Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, the Daily Mail reported Monday.

The project is preparing to enter the patient recruitment stage and begin clinical trials approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The trial would study the development of personalized vaccines to fight breast cancer and melanoma skin cancer.

The vaccine would offer a more targeted and precise cancer treatment for a lower cost, Insider reports. It could even be a good alternative to chemotherapy, a widely used form of treatment.

This project came out of Amazon's secret Moonshot lab called Grand Challenge, and those involved in the research team are believed to be a small group of physicians along with healthcare technology engineers.

News of the cooperation between Amazon and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center first broke in October on Clinicaltrials.gov, which hosts an online database of clinical studies run by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

The study, which began June 9 and is due to be completed in early November 2023, would need 20 patients over the age of 18 for the first phase of the trial, where the "U.S. FDA-regulated drug product" would be tested.

"Amazon is contributing its 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 explained in an email to Insider.

"It's very early days, 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," he added.

If the study progresses, Amazon would be open to working with other organizations in healthcare. This would be the first time the company has worked on a drug of its own.

Although the trial is already getting underway, the vaccine is likely still years away from launching and going through the stringent FDA trials that take months or even years to complete.

Amazon is not the only company in the market that is studying a personalized cancer treatment based on DNA sequencing. Germany-based BioNTech has also been working on a similar project.