Health
Harald zur Hausen, Nobelist Who Found Cause of Cervical Cancer, Dies at 87
Dr. Harald zur Hausen, a German virologist who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2008 for his discovery that the seemingly benign human papillomavirus, known for causing warts, also caused cervical cancer, died on May 29 at his home in Heidelberg, Germany. He was 87.
His death was announced by the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, which Dr. zur Hausen led for two decades. Josef Puchta, the center’s former administrative director and a longtime colleague and friend, said that Dr. zur Hausen had suffered a stroke in May.
Dr. zur Hausen’s discovery paved the way for vaccines against human papillomavirus, or HPV, a sexually transmitted disease that can also cause other cancers, including of the vagina, vulva, penis, anus and back of the throat.
More than 600,000 people develop an HPV-related cancer every year, according to the National Cancer Institute. Vaccination can prevent as many as 90 percent of those cancers.
Dr. zur Hausen leaves “a huge legacy, “Dr. Margaret Stanley, an HPV researcher at the University of Cambridge said in an interview: a lifesaving vaccine and lifesaving tests to detect the virus.
Colleagues remembered Dr. zur Hausen as courteous, considerate and respectful — not always a given in high-profile research laboratories, they noted — and more than one described him as a “gentleman.”
He was also doggedly devoted to his research, and he could be “unshakable” when he had an idea, said Timo Bund, a scientist at the German Cancer Research Center. Dr. zur Hausen’s hypothesis that HPV caused cervical cancer contradicted the prevailing wisdom of “almost the full scientific world,” Dr. Bund said, and took him a decade to prove.
When he first proposed the notion, in the 1970s, many scientists believed that cervical cancer was caused by the herpes simplex virus. But Dr. zur Hausen could find no sign of herpes in the biopsies of cervical cancer patients. When he presented those results at a scientific conference in 1974, he was “intensively criticized,” he recalled in an autobiographical article in the Annual Review of Virology.
Dr. zur Hausen had been intrigued by reports that genital warts could, in rare cases, turn into cancer. He began to look for human papillomavirus DNA in cells from cervical cancer patients using a gene probe, a short piece of single-stranded DNA designed to bind to a specific sequence in the HPV genome.
The work proved challenging, in part because it became clear that there were many different types of HPV, each of which has its own genetic sequence and not all of which cause cancer.
Dr. zur Hausen was undeterred. “I think he never doubted in any way that this was correct,” said Michael Boshart, a geneticist at Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich who was a Ph.D. student on the research team.
Finally, in 1983, Dr. zur Hausen and his colleagues announced that they had found a new type of HPV in cervical cancer cells. The next year, they reported another. About 70 percent of cervical cancer biopsies, they found, contained one of these two viruses.
Other scientists soon confirmed the findings. “I felt some satisfaction in this situation, because up to this moment several colleagues had ridiculed our research, saying, ‘Everyone knows that warts and papillomaviruses are harmless,’” Dr. zur Hausen wrote in the Annual Review of Virology.
Dr. zur Hausen shared clones of the viral DNA freely with other researchers. “Most scientists are selfish and hang on to their stuff,” Dr. Stanley said. “Because he gave them out to the papillomavirus community, there was an absolute explosion of work.”
That research helped accelerate scientific understanding of the viruses as well as the development of vaccines. The first HPV vaccine was approved in 2006. Dr. zur Hausen won the Nobel two years later, sharing the prize with the two French virologists who had discovered H.I.V.
He became an ardent advocate for the vaccine, which is highly effective but which many children do not receive. He argued that the vaccine, which was initially promoted primarily for girls, should also be given to boys, which health officials now recommend.
Dr. zur Hausen was born on March 11, 1936, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, the youngest of Melanie and Eduard zur Hausen’s four children. His father was an officer in the German Army.
The industrial area where he grew up was heavily bombed in World War II. “As a consequence, all schools closed in the beginning of 1943, which was obviously bad for education but welcomed by many of the children,” Dr. zur Hausen recalled. It would be nearly two years before he returned to school.
He decided to study medicine, earned his degree from the University of Düsseldorf in 1960, and became interested in the origins of cancer. His peripatetic research career took him to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for several years and then to multiple German universities. In the 1960s and early ’70s, he conducted research on the Epstein-Barr virus and lymphoma.
In 1972, he moved to the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg, where he began his work on cervical cancer. He later continued that work at the University of Freiburg.
It was at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg that he met the biologist Ethel-Michele de Villiers, who became his wife and his close scientific collaborator.
Nobody “influenced my personal life and my scientific career more,” Dr. zur Hausen wrote in the Annual Review of Virology. “She has repeatedly stated, mockingly, that we two split our activities: She does the work, and I do the talking. Indeed, a large proportion of experimental data obtained during several decades as well as a number of excellent ideas are hers. Looking at her work and her intellectual input and proposals, frequently underestimated by several of her colleagues, I see she has a point in saying this.”
She survives him, as do three sons from a previous marriage, Jan Dirk, Axel and Gerrit. Friends and colleagues said they knew almost nothing about that marriage, noting that Dr. zur Hausen was an intensely private person.
He became the scientific director of the German Cancer Research Center in 1983 and held that position until 2003. But he never stopped conducting research, and in recent years he turned his attention to breast, colon and other cancers.
“He was retired from his directorship,” Dr. Puchta said, “but not from his science.”
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Ivanka Trump, the daughter of incoming President Donald Trump, has been known to lead an active life.
As the mother of three kids and a lover of outdoor sports, the 43-year-old is always on the move, recently adding jiu-jitsu to her mix of physical activity.
In a recent appearance on The Skinny Confidential Him & Her podcast, Trump shared how her daughter, Arabella, expressed interest in learning self-defense when she was 11.
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“I’m just so in awe of [her],” Trump said about her daughter. “She came to me and said, ‘As a woman, I feel like I need to know how to defend myself, and I don’t have a confidence level yet that I can do that.’”
Ivanka Trump plays with her daughter, Arabella Rose Kushner, in the Rose Garden during a Congressional Picnic on the South Lawn of the White House in June 2017. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Trump responded, “At 11 … I was not thinking about how to physically defend myself, and I thought it was the coolest thing.”
After researching self-defense options, Trump enrolled Arabella, now 13, in jiu-jitsu (martial arts) classes with the Valente Brothers in Miami, Florida – and soon the whole family joined in.
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“[Arabella] started asking me to join – I joined,” she said. “Then my two sons wanted to do what their older sister was doing. Then my husband joined … It is good for everyone.”
“It’s almost like a moving meditation.”
Trump, who is now a blue belt in jiu-jitsu, described that she likes how the sport “meshes physical movement.”
“It’s almost like a moving meditation because the movements are so micro,” she said. “It’s like three-dimensional chess.”
“There’s like a real spiritualism to it … The grounding in sort of samurai tradition and culture and wisdom.”
During President Trump’s first term in the White House, Ivanka Trump noted that she had very little focus on fitness, only taking weekly runs with husband Jared Kushner and “chasing the kids around the house.”
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Trump shared that she was “never a gym person,” but always loved sports, which still holds true today.
She said she enjoys skiing, surfing and racquet sports like padel tennis (a hybrid of tennis and squash) and pickle ball, which she described as “fun and social.”
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are seen out for a walk with their children on Dec. 10, 2022, in Miami, Florida. (MEGA/GC Images)
‘Elevating awareness’
On the podcast, Trump said she was drawn to jiu-jitsu because it combines physical fitness and philosophy.
It also focuses more on how to extract yourself from a dangerous situation before having to harm someone who’s a threat, she noted.
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“Having these skills makes you less likely to get into a fight, not more likely to,” Trump went on.
“Once you have the confidence that you can sort of move out of a situation, there’s a real focus on elevating awareness.”
Ivanka Trump waves as she arrives at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland for US President Donald Trump’s departure on Jan. 20, 2021. (ALEX EDELMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
In a previous interview with Fox News Digital, Rener Gracie, head instructor of jiu-jitsu at Gracie University in California, stressed that the only truly reliable skills are those that have been “mastered into muscle memory.”
This occurs through extensively practicing self-defense methods like Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which are “leverage-based and don’t rely on you having a physical advantage over the subject,” he noted.
“Having these skills makes you less likely to get into a fight, not more likely to.”
“And by that, I mean strength, speed, power and size — because in almost every case, the attacker is going to target someone who they feel is physically inferior to them.”
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Gracie, whose family created Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship), shared that jiu-jitsu is “highly sought after” because it only takes weeks or months for someone to “develop the core skills that could keep them safe in a violent physical encounter.”
‘Transformative’ strength training
In addition to mastering self-defense skills, Ivanka Trump recently revealed a shift in her fitness routine to include weightlifting and resistance training.
On Instagram, Trump posted a video displaying different exercises with various equipment in the gym, noting in the caption that she used to focus primarily on cardio, yoga and Pilates.
“Since moving to Miami, I have shifted my focus to weightlifting and resistance training, and it has been transformative in helping me build muscle and shift my body composition in ways I hadn’t imagined,” she wrote.
“I believe in a strength training approach built on foundational, time-tested and simple movements – squats, deadlifts, hinges, pushes and pulls. These are the cornerstones of my workout, emphasizing functional strength for life.”
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Trump added that prioritizing form is “essential” to ensure results before adding on weight.
“This ensures a safe and steady progression while maintaining the integrity of each movement,” she continued. “I incorporate mobility work within my sessions to enhance range of motion.”
“I believe in a strength training approach built on foundational, time-tested and simple movements – squats, deadlifts, hinges, pushes and pulls,” Ivanka Trump wrote in an October Instagram post. (Ivanka Trump/Instagram)
“Weightlifting has enhanced not just my strength but my overall athleticism and resilience,” she added.
Trump said she dedicates three to four days a week to strength training, including two solo sessions and two with a personal trainer.
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She also said that increasing her protein intake has also been “critical” to her progress.
“I now consume between 30 and 50 grams of protein a meal,” she said. “It works … I’ve never been stronger!”
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are seen arriving at the beachside eatery on May 2, 2024, in Miami Beach, Florida. (MEGA/GC Images)
Trump also still enjoys weekly yoga sessions, spending time outdoors with her children and playing sports with friends, she said.
“I also incorporate a couple of short (10-minute), high-intensity interval training sessions (such as sprints) each week to keep my cardiovascular fitness sharp and dynamic,” she noted.
“This balanced approach has infused new energy into my fitness routine and yielded great results.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Ivanka Trump for comment.
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