text: Lung cancer. Coloured X-ray of the chest of an 84 year old woman with a malignant (cancerous) tumour (yellow) in the apex of the right lung (top left). DU CANE MEDICAL IMAGING LTD/Getty Images 
   
   Cuba has for several years had a promising therapeutic vaccine against lung cancer. The 55-year trade embargo led by the US made sure that Cuba was mostly where it stayed. Until—maybe—now. 
   
   The Obama administration has, of course, been trying to normalize relations with the island nation. And last month, during New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's visit to Havana, Roswell Park Cancer Institute finalized an agreement with Cuba's Center for Molecular Immunology to develop a lung cancer vaccine and begin clinical trials in the US. Essentially, US researchers will bring the Cimavax vaccine stateside and get on track for approval by the Food and Drug Administration. 
   
   "The chance to evaluate a vaccine like this is a very exciting prospect," says Candace Johnson, CEO of Roswell Park. She's excited, most likely, because research on the vaccine so far shows that it has low toxicity, and it's relatively cheap to produce and store. The Center for Molecular Immunology will give Roswell Park all of the documentation (how it's produced, toxicity data, results from past trials) for an FDA drug application; Johnson says she hopes to get approval for testing Cimavax within six to eight months, and to start clinical trials in a year. 
   
   How did Cuba end up with a cutting edge immuno-oncology drug? Though the country is justly famous for cigars, rum, and baseball, it also has some of the best and most inventive biotech and medical research in the world. That's especially notable for a country where the average worker earns $20 a month. Cuba spends a fraction of the money the US does on healthcare per individual; yet the average Cuban has a life expectancy on par with the average American. "They've had to do more with less," says Johnson, "so they've had to be even more innovative with how they approach things. For over 40 years, they have had a preeminent immunology community." 
   
   Despite decades of economic sanctions, Fidel and Raul Castro made biotechnology and medical research, particularly preventative medicine, a priority. After the 1981 dengue fever outbreak struck nearly 350,000 Cubans, the government established the Biological Front, an effort to focus research efforts by various agencies toward specific goals. Its first major accomplishment was the successful (and unexpected) production of interferon, a protein that plays a role in human immune response. Since then, Cuban immunologists made several other vaccination breakthroughs, including their own vaccines for meningitis B and hepatitis B, and monoclonal antibodies for kidney transplants. 
   
   The thing about making such great cigars is, smoking is really, really bad for you. Lung cancer is the fourth-leading cause of the death in Cuba. Medical researchers at the Center for Molecular Immunology worked on Cimavax for 25 years before the Ministry of Health made it available to the public—for free—in 2011. Each shot costs the government about $1. A Phase II trial from 2008 showed lung cancer patients who received the vaccine lived an average of four to six months longer than those who didn't. That prompted Japan and some European countries to initiate Cimavax clinical trials as well. 
   
   To be fair, Cimavax probably won't be a game-changing cancer drug in its current form. The vaccine doesn't attack tumors directly, instead going after a protein that tumors produce which then circulates in the blood. That action spurs a person's body to release antibodies against a hormone called epidermal growth factor, which typically spurs cell growth but can also, if unchecked, cause cancer. (Although most people normally think of a vaccine as something that prevents a disease, technically a vaccine is a substance that stimulates the immune system in some way.) So the point of Cimavax is to keep lung tumors from growing and metastasizing, turning a late-stage growth into something chronic but manageable. 
   
   But in the US and Europe, people with lung cancer already have treatment options with the same goal. Roswell Park researchers say they plan to explore the vaccine's potential as a preventative intervention—making it more like a traditional vaccine. Furthermore, epidermal growth factor plays an important role in many other cancers, like prostate, breast, colon, and pancreatic cancer. "All those things are potential targets for this vaccine," says Kelvin Lee, an immunologist at the company. Mostly for financial reasons, Cubans didn't test Cimavax that way at all. 
   
   And that drug isn't the only one with potential in the Cuban pharmacopeia. Thomas Rothstein, a biologist at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, has for six years worked with the Center for Molecular Immunology on another vaccine to treat lung cancer called Racotumomab, with an entirely different mechanism. (It messes with a particular lipid found in tumor cell membranes.) "Investigators from around the world are trying to crack the nut of cancer," Rothstein says. "The Cubans are thinking in ways that are novel and clever." 
   
   Although President Obama has used his executive power to lift some restrictions against medical and research equipment, Congress must lift the Cuban embargo before collaborative research can ramp up. Johnson hopes to see Cuba embrace more entrepreneurialism in science, and see the US soak up more creative approaches to medical research. Constrained by politics, the Cuban researchers had to innovate in ways the US and Europe did not. Now maybe they'll be able to teach their colleagues what they learned. ||||| The Roswell Park Cancer Institute and software company Infor struck deals with their Cuban counterparts on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s trade mission to the Communist island nation. 
   
   Roswell Park, based in Buffalo, will work with the Center for Molecular Immunology in Havana to bring a lung cancer vaccine to the U.S., while Manhattan-based Infor will provide healthcare software to a Cuban university, the companies’ chief executive officers said Tuesday at a news briefing at Jose Marti Airport in Havana. 
   
   Such accords will help end the half-century U.S. embargo of Cuba, Cuomo said before the delegation departed for John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City after a two-day visit. 
   
   “We will do everything we can to facilitate and expedite the process of that change.” Governor Andrew Cuomo 
   
   “It affirms the feeling I had coming down that normalization of relationships between our special countries is the exact right way to go,” Cuomo said. “There’s no doubt that developing these mutual business relationships that are proven, that assist Cuba and also work for the companies, is a big part of moving forward.” 
   
   On Monday, Cuomo became the first U.S governor to visit Cuba since President Barack Obama eased travel restrictions. The almost 27 hours on the ground placed business leaders from New York-based companies including Pfizer Inc. and MasterCard Inc. in direct contact with Cuban executives in the same fields. 
   
   Clinical Tests 
   
   Cuomo, a 57-year-old Democrat, met with First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Almaino along with Cuban trade officials. 
   
   Under its deal, Roswell Park will be able to begin clinical tests of the vaccine, CEO Candace Johnson said. 
   
   “This would not have happened without this trade mission, which provided that face-to-face finalization of the agreement,” Johnson said. 
   
   Infor CEO Charles Phillips said his accord was reached while eating a dinner of rice and beans at Atelier Restaurant, one of 500,000 private business licensed to operate legally. The restaurant sits on the top floor of a converted home. 
   
   “I was surprised and impressed in the level of expertise they have in healthcare technology,” Phillips said. 
   
   Cuomo said he agrees with Obama that the best way to change Cuba is to engage with President Raul Castro, brother of Fidel, whose 1959 revolution and seizure of property and interests owned by U.S. businesses led to the trade sanctions. Cuomo didn’t meet with Raul Castro. 
   
   Business leaders met with their Cuban counterparts into Monday evening. Cuomo then left to visit Cardinal Ortega, thanking him for his work on human rights in Cuba. The governor gave him a New York-made humidor and a New York Mets baseball hat. 
   
   From there, Cuomo went on walking tour that culminated in a look under the hood of a 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air. The original engine had long since died, and with the embargo in place, owner Julio Alvarez said he was unable to find the U.S. parts needed to fix it. So, Alvarez replaced it with a diesel Toyota engine. 
   
   Cuomo called it “an innovative and creative adaptation” and cited it as an example of why the embargo should end.
target: – Closer American ties with one of the world's major cigar exporters could actually be good news in the fight against lung cancer. Cuba has developed Cimavax, an effective lung cancer vaccine, and American researchers can now finally get their hands on it, reports Wired. After New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo visited Cuba for a trade mission last month, the Buffalo-based Roswell Park Cancer Institute struck a deal with Havana's Center of Molecular Immunology to develop a vaccine, allowing clinical trials involving Cimavax to begin in the US, Bloomberg reports. Cimavax, which stops tumors from growing, was 25 years in the making and has been available for free to Cuban patients since 2011, Wired reports. So how did such a small and poor country create a world-leading therapeutic vaccine? Roswell Park CEO Candace Johnson, who hopes to start clinical trials in the US within a year, tells Wired that the country's biotech industry has thrived despite—and perhaps even because of—the US embargo. "They've had to do more with less, so they've had to be even more innovative with how they approach things," she says. "For over 40 years, they have had a preeminent immunology community." Experts say they're excited not just by the potential of Cimavax, but by other novel Cuban cancer treatments that could now be available to US researchers. (The US has approved the first ferry service to Cuba in 50 years.)