Amazon has invested millions in Nautilus Biotechnology

Amazon has invested millions in a pre-revenue biotech company that went public after merging with a specialist acquisition company in early June, according to a regulatory brief released last week.

The move aligns with Amazon’s efforts to establish a presence in healthcare. The online retailer now operates an online pharmacy following the $ 753 million acquisition of start-up PillPack in 2018, and in June, an Amazon executive said other companies were interested in use of the Amazon Care telehealth service.

Amazon revealed it had a $ 14.7 million stake in Nautilus Biotechnology on June 30. Following this story’s publication on Thursday, stocks were halted and rose 50% after trading resumed.

Nautilus has built a prototype for a device capable of measuring the human proteome, a set of proteins in the body which, unlike the genome, constantly changes based on food consumption and other factors.

Companies like Thermo Fisher Scientific produce mass spectrometers, but these devices can be expensive and produce only a small percentage of protein from a drop of blood, said Sujal Patel, co-founder and CEO of Nautilus, in an interview. The company wants to become able to measure more than 95% of the proteome.

Organizations could use the system for drug discovery, as well as clinical diagnostics and precision medicine. In 2020, Roche-owned Genentech agreed to use the Nautilus system and the companies plan to publish their research results. Nautilus expects its first revenue in 2022 and targets a long-term operating margin of 25-30%. Patel, a former co-founder and CEO of data storage hardware company Isilon, which EMC acquired in 2010 for $ 2.3 billion, said Nautilus would sell its instruments and deliver cloud-based software.

The proteome study could help researchers find treatments for people who end up with severe lung damage after contracting Covid-19, and it could have helped demonstrate the safety of coronavirus vaccines during the process. approval, said Parag Mallick, co-founder and head of Nautilus Scientific.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ venture capital firm Bezos Expeditions has invested in Nautilus, in addition to Amazon.

“I have no further comments on their motivations going forward,” Patel said, although he added that could change. Amazon declined to say if it has a relationship with Nautilus beyond investing.

Amazon’s other two public company stakes at the end of the second quarter were both owned by companies it does business with. Amazon held $ 32 million in shares of egg distributor Vital Farms, which called the Amazon subsidiary a “major customer,” and Amazon held $ 335 million in shares of Air Transport Services Group, which manages part of Amazon’s aviation logistics.

Nautilus is based in Seattle and had around 70 employees when it was combined with Arya Sciences Acquisition Corp III in June, Patel said.

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