The Farrah Fawcett Foundation announced this week that it will be teaming up with Stand Up To Cancer and the American Association for Cancer Research to create a team dedicated solely to the research of HPV and HPV-related cancers. The project will be called “Therapeutic CD8 vaccines against conserved E7 HPV epitopes identified by MS.”, and the foundations will provide $1.2 million in grant monies for the project. The grant will be made available to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for a clinical trial of a cancer-fighting antigen.

“We believe that the grant committee was encouraged by novel interdisciplinary science in conjunction with the powerful immunogenicity data that Immunovaccine has collected to date with our DPX-Survivac cancer vaccine candidate,” said Marc Mansour, Ph.D., who is the chief operating officer of Immunovaccine. “We are excited to work with the talented team at Dana-Farber and add value to their clinical program with our DepoVax technology. Our previous work with DPX-Survivac gives us confidence that DepoVax has the potential to induce strong immunological responses to their novel antigen to enable the vaccine in the clinic.”

Fawcett died of anal cancer in 2009, a disease predominantly caused by HPV. The iconic actress was diagnosed in 2006, and a year later started the Farrah Fawcett Foundation. She was deeply interested in alternative medicines and helping those who had been diagnosed, particularly children and families who couldn’t keep up with mounting medical bills.

“Farrah was committed to the struggle against anal cancer and other forms of cancer,” said Alana Stewart, president of the Farrah Fawcett Foundation. “We are very pleased to continue Farrah’s legacy by supporting this important scientific initiative.”

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