Amazon Launches Cancer Vaccine Clinical Trial in Partnership With Fred Hutchinson (cnbc.com) 22
Amazon is developing cancer vaccines in collaboration with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and it recently launched an FDA-approved clinical trial. From a report: Amazon and Fred Hutchinson are looking to recruit 20 participants over the age of 18 for the early stage, or phase 1, trial, according to a filing on clinicaltrials.gov, a database of clinical trials run by the National Library of Medicine. The goal is to develop "personalized vaccines" that can treat breast cancer and melanoma, a form of skin cancer, the filing states. Fred Hutchinson is listed as a sponsor of the study, while Amazon is listed as a collaborator, according to the filing. News of the partnership was first reported by Business Insider. The study was first posted last October, and it began June 9. It's expected to be complete by Nov. 1 of 2023. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the partnership, and said it's being led by Fred Hutch. "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," the spokesperson told CNBC 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."
Included with Prime? (Score:1)
Don't Mess With Jeff Bezos! (Score:2)
requisite South Park [youtube.com]
Please explain (Score:2)
A vaccine should prevent a disease, no? You don't give it to people already having the disease.
So... To check whether your vaccine works, you either have to infect the test subjects, which is, as far as I know, not easily done with cancers... or you have to test it on a LOT of subjects to compare statistics...
Or is this just a trial to make sure this doesn't make people grow a penis on their foreheads?
Re: Please explain (Score:2)
Phase I clinical trials are performed on healthy people as a simple google search would reveal
Re: Please explain (Score:3)
But I think his confusion is with this sentence:
"The goal is to develop "personalized vaccines" that can treat breast cancer and melanoma"
Vaccines prevent things. They don't treat them. However, as I understand it, this works similar to how a vaccine works, but is reactive. Generally your immune system isn't able to identify and fight off cancer. But these "personal vaccines" are intended to trick your body into creating antibodies that then help identify your cancer cells as something to be fought. So mayb
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
The word "vaccine" is applied to things that are not really vaccines. All the current mRNA drugs are NOT vaccines in any traditional sense. Traditional vaccines are inactivated virus (like flu), attenuated (a vaccine that is more adapted to non-humans and less dangerous in humans; like the very first use of horsepox/cowpox by Dr. Jenner to prevent smallpox), or synthetic subunit protein .. no real virus (hep B is an example. It's also the least effective vaccine until now, with a 60% take rate after 3 shots
Re: (Score:1)
No idea about the Amazon "vaccine". But what you write there is quite bullshit that shows a profound lack of understanding of how vaccines interact with the human immune system at best and at worst deliberate and malicious misinformation.
Re: (Score:2)
Very informative, I wasn't aware of that technicality. Thanks!
Re: (Score:2)
It's got nothing to do with viruses, because tetanus is caused by a bacteria. Thus it can't contain an inactivated virus.
It also does not contain an inactivated variant of the pathogen. It "only" contains what the immune system needs to detect to defend against, in this case the inactivated toxin that the bacteria produces. It's also does not contain any kind of subunit protein. I suppose you could argue that it contains "no real virus", but that would mostly just under
Re: (Score:3)
Your understanding of "vaccine" is limited. The most common use is as you've described, but there are several vaccines that stimulate the immune system to a stronger or more rapid reaction against something you've already been infected with. "Cancer vaccines" are a bit of an edge case even here, though, as "infected with" isn't usually a good description.
Re: (Score:2)
The rabies vaccine is a good example. It's given ASAP after exposure. AFAIK it's almost never given without already having been exposed (and possibly infected).
Re:Please explain (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
A vaccine should prevent a disease, no? You don't give it to people already having the disease.
Calling these vaccines is likely a bit of a misnomer. A better word would be immunotherapy. Vaccines are a kind of immunotherapy, but not all immunotherapy is considered vaccination, because not all immunotherapy is preventative. Unfortunately, a lot of people are sloppy about that distinction. :-)
In this case, they're training the immune system to recognize and attack cancerous cells. I guess it does slightly blur the line, because with melanoma, a big part of what you're trying to do is prevent metast
Re: (Score:2)
Very good proposition, I'd settle for "immunotherapy"!
Re: (Score:2)
Words can have multiple meanings. I mean, look up the word "run" in the dictionary. That's because we are not interested in someone telling us their idea of what a universally recognized definition ought to be. Whatever you come up with, I can tell you something that either fits that definition but nobody would call a vaccine or something that doesn't fit the definition but most scientists would agree is a vaccine. The thing they are working on is called a vaccine because it teaches stuff to the immune syst
Re: (Score:2)
Will the vaccine come with Prime shipping? (Score:2)