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Amazon is Quietly Developing Cancer Vaccines


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Amazon, the multinational e-commerce company, is looking to deliver vaccines to your door!

Is that what you’re thinking?

Unfortunately, it gets creepier than Amazon delivering vaccines to your front steps.

The company is diving into the pharmaceutical industry by collaborating with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center to develop cancer vaccines in a new clinical trial approved by the FDA.

“According to a filing with the National Institutes of Health, Fred Hutch is testing a “personalized” vaccine for patients with late-stage melanoma skin cancer and certain breast cancers that have metastasized or are unresponsive to other treatments,” The Defender reported.

 

“Amazon and Fred Hutchinson are looking to recruit 20 participants over the age of 18 for the early stage, or phase 1, trial,” CNBC noted.

The Seattle-based sponsors and leads the study, while Amazon, a partner of the World Economic Forum, is listed as its sole collaborator.

A representative of Fred Hutch confirmed the collaboration with Amazon and said in an emailed statement:

“Fred Hutch is working with Amazon to explore the development of a personalized treatment for certain forms of cancer. Fred Hutch recently received permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to proceed with a Phase I clinical trial, which is now underway. It’s very early in a long, multi-year process, and success is by no means guaranteed. The program is an important example of how Fred Hutch works with collaborators to develop new therapies.”

“Fred Hutch previously collaborated with Merck to develop its controversial human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine and COVID-19 drug, molnupiravir (MOV),” The Defender noted.

Via The Defender:

As The Defender reported in March, Attorneys from Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman of Children’s Health Defense, filed their 14th lawsuit against Merck alleging the drugmaker knowingly concealed adverse events associated with its Gardasil HPV vaccine.

“I question the integrity of a vaccine involving the Fred Hutch group after litigating devastating injuries related to the Gardasil vaccine, which they helped pioneer,” attorney Michael Baum told The Defender in an email.

“Gardasil was rushed through approval without proper safety oversight and shoddy clinical trials, according to the evidence and allegations my firm is litigating against Merck right now.”

MOV is indicated for use in adults with mild to moderate COVID-19 who are at risk for severe disease or hospitalization.

“The efficacy of this product [MOV] is not overwhelmingly good,” said Dr. David Hardy, an infectious-disease physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, during an FDA advisory meeting to discuss authorization of the drug.

Members of the FDA’s Antimicrobial Drugs Advisory Committee who voted against authorizing MOV for emergency use said more research was needed about the drug’s safety.

“The risk of widespread effects on potential birth defects, especially delayed effects on the male, has not been adequately studied,” said Dr. Sankar Swaminathan, chief of infectious diseases at the University of Utah.

What could possibly go wrong with Fred Hutchinson’s collaboration with Amazon to develop cancer vaccines?


 

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