"The method is ground-breaking because it focuses on prevention, which can be life-saving, in particular for women without regular access to healthcare," the EPO said in a statement.
For this achievement, Zhou and Frazer have been named finalists for the European Inventor Award 2015 in the category of non-European countries.
Zhou and Frazer are “unsung heroes of modern medicine," said EPO President Benoit Battistelli upon announcing the finalists.
"In their fight against cervical cancer, they focused on the cause rather than on the symptoms of the disease. Developing a vaccine has saved countless lives and also saved many women from a protracted and painful course of treatment, involving surgery and chemotherapy," Battistelli said.
Introduced by the EPO, it took almost 15 years until the cervical cancer vaccine was ready for market. In 1991, working at the University of Queensland, Zhou and Frazer filed a patent application for the missing link between the genuine virus and the artificially produced "representative."
"This was a milestone achievement for the now-widely available HPV vaccines," the EPO.
By Ruchi Singh
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