T.C. Wu. Portrait of Professor T.C. Wu, principal researcher of a vaccine for cervical cancer in women. He is in his laboratory at the Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, USA. Each year 200,000 women worldwide die of cervical cancer. Most of this cancer is associated with infection by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV); an E7 antigen in this virus turns normal cervical cells cancerous. The cancer then rapidly multipli- es without being recognised by the immune system. The vaccine employs another genetically engineered virus (Vaccinia) to insert a molecular tag (LAMP- 1) in affected cells to make E7 recognisable. This alerts the immune system to kill the cancer cells.