The trial of their lives

first of six chapters / A Hopkins doctor's vaccine offers a hope of survival for four women with terminal breast cancer

Sun Special Report

She starts making plans - to go to the North Carolina mountains and to take that Colorado hiking vacation she has been dreaming of. Maybe she'll spend some time with her sons. She'll go back to serving the tourists at Disney's Animal Kingdom, as long as she has the energy for it.

This summer could be her last. She's going to live as if it is. "I'm just being realistic," she says as she heads away from Hopkins on a bright spring afternoon. "There's no next time in my life anymore."

more on the series

Tomorrow in The Baltimore Sun: How a student of science came to devote her life to developing a vaccine for breast cancer, the disease that killed her mother.

On the web: Watch a video of Dr. Leisha Emens discussing her quest to develop a breast cancer vaccine at baltimoresun.com/vaccine

Monday on WJZ: Watch one woman's personal story as she battles breast cancer. Can this study save her life? See the interview at 11 p.m. Monday on WJZ Maryland's News Station