Amazon, an American e-commerce giant, among other activities, has been working secretly for several years on making a vaccine against the most common disease in the world: the common cold.
- A secret division of the American giant would bring together a hundred researchers on this project
- The development of a vaccine against the common cold comes up against the extreme variety of rhinoviruses
Amazon is secretly working on a cold vaccine. The code name of the project: “Gesundheit Project”, in German, “Projet Santé”, in French, according to revelations from the American site CNBC. This top-secret project is said to have started several years ago and employs around 100 people, including scientists and technologists, united in a discreet division of Amazon Web Services (AWS) called “Grand Challenge”.
Amazon not alone on the spot
This secret division of AWS has not been publicly acknowledged by Amazon. It would aim to tackle the big problems, ideally to find solutions that will have a major effect on humanity. Sometimes known as “1492,” the group is led by Babak Parviz, who worked in research and development at Google X. Partly secretive, the company focuses its work on innovations related to robotics and computer science. artificial intelligence.
Grand Challenge’s goal of finding a vaccine against the common cold is not easy. The difficulty is that 75% of the common cold is caused by a class of virus known as rhinoviruses, of which there are 160 known types. In addition, the common cold is very prone to mutations and quickly develops resistance to different drugs, and could bypass vaccines very quickly. “The biggest challenge will be to prove that the vaccine does not cause more side effects than it brings benefits”adds Mike Pellini, an investor interviewed by CNBC.
Amazon isn’t alone in trying to find a cold vaccine. In 2019, researchers at Stanford University, in conjunction with those at the University of California (United States), announced that they had succeeded in inhibiting the virus by deactivating a human protein. Researchers at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, are also taking part in this effort to find a vaccine.
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