Researchers claim that the first ovarian cancer vaccination in history has the potential to eradicate the illness.

The OvarianVax vaccination primes the immune system to identify and combat ovarian cancer in its early stages.

It's being created by scientists at the University of Oxford.

In an effort to eradicate the illness, it is hoped that women would be able to get the vaccination on the NHS as a prophylactic measure.

Experts speculate that it might function similarly to the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, which is poised to eradicate cervical cancer.

Finding cellular targets for the vaccination is what Professor Ahmed Ahmed and his group at the university's MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine's ovarian cancer cell laboratory are attempting to do.

They will determine how well the vaccine destroys disease models in a lab setting as well as which proteins on the surface of early-stage ovarian cancer cells are most identified by the immune system.