Is a Throat Cancer Vaccine Already Reality?

Michael Douglas was recently in the news, not for a new movie premiere, but to reveal he had throat cancer caused by the human papillomavirus. This brought increased attention to the issue of rising HPV-related cancer rates, which when combined with new study results, could benefit at-risk individuals and be a boon to two pharma stocks as well.

Although the word vaccine can be used with certain cancer immunology programs, there are actually two effective and commercially available vaccines that effectively inoculate against certain strains of the virus. Already used to protect against contracting cervical cancer new study results show that it could be effective in throat cancer as well.

In this video, health-care analyst David Williamson details this study's results and discusses how these events could impact shares of GlaxoSmithKline and Merck.

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The article Is a Throat Cancer Vaccine Already Reality? originally appeared on Fool.com.

David Williamson owns shares of Merck. Follow David on Twitter: @MotleyDavid.The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools don't all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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