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Dr. Benjamin Jin, a biologist working on immunotherapy for HPV+ cancers, works in the lab of Dr. Christian Hinrichs, an investigator at the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, February 7, 2018. - Experimental trials are ongoing at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, a US government-funded research hospital where doctors are trying to partially replace patients' immune systems with T-cells that would specifically attack cancers caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), a common sexually transmitted infection. A person's T-cells will naturally try to kill off any invader, including cancer, but usually fall short because tumors can mutate, hide, or simply overpower the immune system. Immunotherapies that have seen widespread success, such as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR-T) cell therapies, mainly target blood cancers like lymphoma, myeloma and leukemia, which have a tumor antigen -- like a flag or a signal -- on the surface of the cells so it is easy for immune cells to find and target the harmful cells. But many common cancers lack this clear, surface signal. Hinrichs' approach focuses on HPV tumors because they contain viral antigens that the immune system can easily recognize. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)