Book excerpt: A select group of highly renowned scientists - among them four Nobel Prize Winners - have been asked to summarize significant developments of their ownrecent research in the life sciences at a workshop organized on the occasionof the opening of the new Paul-Ehrlich-Institut in Langen near Frankfurt/ Main. They do this in a comparative fashion evaluating similar achievements in adjacent fields. Their intellectual state-of-the-art analysis and fascinating outlook on future perspectives provides exciting and stimulating reading. The authors address areas in virology, immunology, oncology and evolution. Intelligent design of vaccines and other immunologial drugs, virus evolution and viruses as nature's engineers, pathology of chronic autoimmune and central nervous system diseases and the biology of mammary cancer belong to the topics discussed. A book easy to read for scientists, doctors and students interested in rapidly developing fields in the life sciences.