A single vaccine could soon eliminate an entire cancer
While most medical breakthroughs merely manage disease, a series of shots is currently on track to make a major form of cancer a historical footnote by 2040.
Before the 1920s, doctors had no reliable way to catch cervical cancer until it was too late. That changed when George Papanicolaou developed a simple cell-scrubbing test that eventually cut mortality rates by 75 percent. Today, we have moved beyond early detection to actual prevention. By using lab-grown proteins that mimic the outer shell of the human papillomavirus, or HPV, modern vaccines train the immune system to block the virus before it can rewrite a patient's DNA.
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