Denise A. Galloway

WIth her colleagues, Galloway established that HPVs cause nearly all cervical cancers--a leading cause of cancer deaths for women worldwide--and most other anogenital and oropharyngeal cancers. Her team also found a way to produce, from a single HPV gene, virus-like particles that trigger an immune response. This discovery laid the groundwork for today's HPV vaccines--one of the few cancer prevention vaccines available. She is currently exploring the long term immunity conferred by HPV vaccines.  She also showed that the virus that causes Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a novel type of human polyomavirus. Recently, she developed a test to monitor progression of MCC and is exploring the molecular virology and cancer causing properties of this virus.