AIRES -- The idea of a vaccine for lung cancer sounds absurd at first. Lung cancer isn't the flu, after all. But, after a 19-year quest by researchers in Argentina and Cuba, such a medicine is now a reality.


The story of the vaccine begins in 1994, when a group of Argentine scientists who dreamed of creating a cancer vaccine met with a group of Cuban scientists who had an idea of how to make one. And it reaches its finale on July 1, when a drug called Vaxira (Racotumomab) goes on sale in Argentina.


Developed by ID+i, an Argentine consortium of universities, government ministries, and Grupo Insud, a local pharmaceutical conglomerate, along with Cuba's Molecular Immunology Center (CIM, in Spanish), the vaccine required $100 million of investment, Dr. Hugo Sigman, Grupo Insud's CEO and the founder of ID+i, says. Besides Argentina, the drug has also already been approved in Cuba and has been licensed to 25 countries in the Americas and Asia, from Brazil to Cambodia. more head-turning aspects of the drug is its classification as a vaccine. It is not a vaccine in the traditional sense of a preventative shot given to kids, but rather an anti-idiotypic vaccine. Instead of introducing a weakened version of a virus so that the body is ready to fight when the real version shows up, vaccines like Vaxira encourage the body to fight lung cancer tumor cells that are already present in the body.