Anti-EBV vaccine trials
Last January a team of British cancer researchers announced to the press that they were ready to put "the first anti-cancer vaccine" into clinical trials. The vaccine, developed by Britain's Cancer Research Campaign (CRC), was designed, the team said, to prevent infection by the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). Scientists have found a strong link between this virus, which is present in about 95 % of the world's adult population, and several types of cancer, especially a nose and throat cancer that kills 40 000-50 000 people a year in Asia. In the West it causes glandular fever or infectious mononucleosis, a relatively mild but sometimes highly incapacitating flu-like condition that plagues thousands of college students and army recruits every year.