The Lifesciences Magazine

  During a meeting at a restaurant inside a deconsecrated church hospital in Mainz, Germany, a small group of cancer researchers devised an audacious plan five years ago: they would test their novel Pancreatic Cancer Vaccine against one of the disease’s most virulent forms, a cancer known for relapsing even in patients whose tumours had been removed. Some scientists hypothesised that the vaccine might not be able to prevent those relapses. Patients, however, were in a grave situation. The rapid recurrence of pancreatic cancer could also work in the researchers’ favour because they would rapidly learn if the vaccination was effective or not, for better or worse. The scientists revealed findings on Wednesday that belied the high stakes. Half of the patients who received the vaccination experienced an immunological response, and during the duration of the research, none of these patients saw a return of their cancer, which was a result that outside specialists deemed to be very encou...