Keeping the Momentum: A Reflection on 2016, and a Look Forward to 2017

When EBioMedicinefirst launched in late 2014, theworldwatched in horror as an Ebola virus outbreak claimed the lives of thousands ofWest Africans. The outbreak spurred a massive response by researchers around theworld to develop effective therapeutics and a protective vaccine. As we embark upon our third full year here at the journal, we can now indeed celebrate the success of an Ebola vaccine which appears to be completely protective in humans. In a trial published in December 2016 in The Lancet, this recombinant respiratory syncytial virus (rRSV)-based vaccine was administered to more than 5800 people in Guinea, all of whom were protected from disease. We praise the largescale collaborative effort of both clinical and basic science researchers which has brought us closer to preventing further Ebola outbreaks. Moving forward in 2017, we hope a similar mobilization of efforts will lead us towards better diagnostic and therapeutic options for patients affected by Zika virus. Although quite different from Ebola virus in its clinical presentation, this emergent and wide-spread public health threat will require the same degree of scientific collaboration across basic and clinical disciplines. 2016 saw many exciting translational advances—in addition to the success with Ebola vaccine development, results early in 2016 showed that amodified version of thewidely publicized RV144HIV vaccine protocol was safe and well tolerated. While the RV144 vaccine protocol itself was 31% protective, the new immunization protocol hopes to increase efficacy in part by using an improved adjuvant, and including an additional booster shot at the one year mark. This early success with the modified protocol has given the green light for one of the largest scale HIV vaccine trials to date—HVTN 702—a phase IIb/III clinical trial which has just began enrolling patients in South Africa. While it will be some time before we hear results, our fingers are tightly crossed that we will see the dial move even further upward for efficacy in preventing new HIV infections. New advances with checkpoint inhibitors and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell based therapies have of course dominated many cancer therapy-based headlines over the past year. In 2017 we expect many more great ideas to develop further within this explosive area of therapeutic research—such as defining new cancer antigens to target, improving safety, and exploring combination therapies. 2016 also saw other exciting news in cancer research, with the first US FDA approval for liquid biopsies—in this case, for the detection of non-small cell lung carcinoma. These tests look at sequences of DNA fragments from lysed cancer cells that are present in the blood of affected patients. If specific cancer-associated gene mutations are found, this information can help clinicians make better, tailor-made, treatment decisions. Because these tests are non-invasive, clinicians also hope to be able to use liquid biopsies for early detection of specific cancers. Liquid biopsies may still not be as accurate in tracking as broad a spectrum of tumor mutations as traditional tissue biopsy, but we expect this simple blood