LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) — What began as a failed experiment in an East Lansing lab ended up changing the course of cancer treatment. Michigan State University scientists, tinkering with electricity and bacteria in the 1960s, uncovered cisplatin—a drug that would transform testicular cancer survival rates from grim to nearly certain.

This week, their work was recognized with the Golden Goose Award, a tongue-in-cheek prize created to show that research once dismissed as odd can yield lifesaving results.

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The story is almost too strange to be true: physicist-turned-biologist Barnett Rosenberg, with colleagues Loretta VanCamp and Thomas Krigas, set out to see how electricity affected cell growth. 

The shock came when bacteria stopped dividing—not from the current itself, but from a chemical reaction in the solution they were using. That accident opened the door to one of the most important cancer drugs of the 20th century. 

“He (Rosenberg) was following a hypothesis that later turned out to be not 100% correct,” MSU dean Eric Hegg said, according to The Detroit News. “But he learned something along the way. In this particular case, what they learned was really transformative.”

By the late 1970s, cisplatin was federally approved and saving lives. Today, its legacy is enormous: survivors, families, and even scholarships funded by royalties that MSU estimates generated nearly $400 million for further research.

Past winners include projects on screwworm mating habits (which rescued the livestock industry) and Yellowstone microbes (which helped unlock DNA sequencing), according to The Detroit News. MSU’s cancer breakthrough now joins that list.