Paul Lambert is an oncology professor and director of the McArdle Lab for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Lambert, who studies human papillomavirus, said the Shope virus was the first tumor virus ever discovered. American physician and animal pathologist Richard E. Shope first identified the virus in the 1930s.
“This is not a bloodborne pathogen,” Lambert said. “This virus, papillomaviruses, is transmitted by exposure on the skin.”