By: Albert Sun

In February 2024, Dr. Wu received her Sjoberg prize, which included 1 million dollars. She was given this money because she made the cure to cancer in Boston, Massachusetts.

Cures for diseases are not easy to make, but scientists have found ways to make it possible.

Dr. Wu and her team developed a cure for a type of cancer that most people get. She made the vaccine in the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. Each person gets a different type of cancer, so she made a vaccine that can cure a very common type of skin cancer depending on the person’s particular genetic makeup.

Dr. Wu’s research focuses on the human immune system that fights the cancer viruses. The researchers wondered if vaccines created by Catherine Wu will work on all the types of cancer.

From 2015 to 2021, Dr. Wu and her team tested the vaccine on 6 people that suffered from a type of cancer called melanoma. Surprisingly, the vaccine cured all of them.