(ATLANTIC) SARAH ZHANG, November 7, 2016 — The country has a whole arsenal of unique drugs locked behind the U.S. embargo.

Last week, in a historic first, a box of water made it from Havana to Buffalo, New York. It was roundabout journey, since you can’t just FedEx a box from Cuba to the U.S. (The embargo, no commercial cargo flights, etc.) The box flew first to Toronto. Customs brokers then escorted it across the U.S.-Canada border to its final destination at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

Why such a production for a box of water? It was the test run for a promising lung-cancer vaccine called CIMAvax, which was developed in Cuba and soon will begin clinical trials in the U.S. But no one in America has ever run a clinical trial with Cuban drugs, and no one was even sure, logistically, how to ship fragile cargo between the two countries. (Again, the embargo, no commercial cargo flights.) So the researchers devised a roundabout route and tested it with this box of water. “We actually wanted them to ship a box of beer,” joked Kelvin Lee, an immunologist at Roswell who is leading the trials, “but it turned out to be was too complicated.”

Source: Cuba’s Cancer Vaccine CIMAvax Is Finally Coming to the U.S. – The Atlantic