EditSerbia Bets on Putin’s cancer “miracle”: Enteromix trials begin amid Sputnik-style hype
Serbia is set to become testing ground for an experimental Russian anti-cancer treatment, amid doubts from the medical community
In a striking replay of pandemic-era vaccine diplomacy, Serbia has agreed to become the world’s first testing ground for Enteromix, an experimental Russian anti-cancer treatment, the Serbian and the Italian press reported.
According to the publications, Serbia’s strongman, President Aleksandar Vučić, envisions the country as a medical tourism hub where patients from across the world will flock for the therapy – much as they did in 2021 for Sputnik V.
Serbian Minister of Economic Cooperation Nenad Popović announced that Enteromix, developed by Moscow’s Medical and Radiological Research Center, is a personalized immunotherapy that can be produced rapidly using artificial intelligence. According to Popović, the process takes just seven days: a patient’s genetic material is combined with tumor tissue to target metastases from melanoma or colon cancer.
The deal was reportedly sealed directly between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Vučić. Last week, a Russian delegation inspected Belgrade’s laboratories, and a joint working group was established.
By year-end, a team of Serbian oncologists, microbiologists, and infectious disease specialists will travel to Moscow for training and research at the Gamaleya and Herzen Institutes. Initial doses, intended for both Serbian citizens and foreign patients, will be produced at Belgrade’s Torlak Institute, with administration expected to begin in 2026.
The announcements sound familiar. During the early days of COVID-19, a single phone call between Putin and Vučić secured Sputnik V deliveries before Western vaccines were widely available. Hundreds of Italians crossed into Serbia to receive the “revolutionary Russian antidote.”
Moscow designated Belgrade as a European production base, hoping to penetrate the EU market through health cooperation. That ambition faltered amid reports of adverse reactions, pressure from Western pharmaceutical giants, and geopolitical fallout; Serbia eventually redirected surplus doses to Africa.
Enteromix faces even steeper scientific scrutiny. It is not a preventive vaccine but an oncolytic virotherapy: four modified harmless viruses that Russian researchers claim can destroy 60 to 80 percent of tumor mass, strengthen the immune system, and cause minimal organ damage or toxicity. Yet all positive results to date come from animal studies. Phase I human trials on just 48 volunteers aged 18 to 75 began in June. Robust, peer-reviewed data typically require years of study and hundreds of participants.
Compounding skepticism, Russian authorities unveiled preliminary findings not at a scientific conference but at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum – a choice widely seen as political rather than medical. Global oncology leaders, from Pfizer and BioNTech to Israeli research centers, have been developing similar therapies for years and stress that immunotherapy remains one tool among many, unable to replace surgery, radiotherapy, or chemotherapy, as there is no “magic bullet” for cancer.
Russia’s Federal Medical and Biological Agency declared in September the preclinical results as “promising.” Vučić, speaking with Gamaleya Institute director Alexander Ginzburg, expressed hope that the therapy would reach Serbian patients “by the end of next year.”
He was careful to add: “This is not my promise – I am not a scientist, but we will receive the substance, produce it locally as we did with COVID, and eventually manufacture it independently.”
‘People given false hope’
The announcement triggered immediate backlash. Savo Pilipović, a representative of Serbia’s melanoma patient association, told N1 television that desperate patients had flooded their offices seeking information. “People have been given false hope,” he said. “What Russia is developing may one day help, but it is unlicensed and experimental. Manipulating the suffering of the ill is unethical.”
Opposition figure Aris Movsesian, vice-president of the Movement of Free Citizens, called the rollout “another propaganda mechanism instead of serious health policy.” He drew parallels to 2015, when a Serbian minister posed with an unregistered Cuban immunotherapy in an election-year photo op. A decade later, that treatment remains unapproved and unavailable.
The initiative is inseparable from geopolitics. Serbia, an EU candidate, is the only European country that has never sanctioned Russia. Belgrade maintains “brotherly” ties with Moscow and welcomes Chinese investment in infrastructure across the Balkans. Dozens of Serbian mercenaries reportedly fight in Ukraine. Authorities uncovered in September a training camp in Loznitsa where 170 foreign nationals, including Moldovans and Romanians, learned urban combat under three arrested Russian intelligence officers – men Vučić admitted had also trained protesters in Paris and Germany.
Eternally torn between East and West, Serbia remains ideologically closer to the Kremlin than to Brussels. For Vučić, hosting Enteromix trials offers economic opportunity, political leverage, and a lifeline amid unrelenting protests against his autocratic rule.
Sources: BGNES, Corriere della Sera, Vreme
Caption: Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) shake hands before a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, one day ahead of China’s Victory Parade commemorating the end of WWII in Beijing, China, 2 September 2025. EPA/ALEXANDER KAZAKOV / SPUTNIK / KREMLIN / POOL
Updated: October 24, 2025 - 10:47
