Watertown’s Selecta received a major funding boost in its effort to treat cancers caused by the Human Papiloma Virus (HPV).
Selecta Biosciences received a $3.2 million grant from the Russian-based Skolkovo Foundation to fund work designing a synthetic virus that would trigger a person’s immune system to fight off the cancerous cells, according to a story in the Boston Business Journal.
HPV is the second most common cancer in women and leads to more than 529,000 cases of cervical cancer and 270,000 deaths annually, according to a World Health Organization report. There are 26,000 new cases of HPV-related cancers annually in the United States.