Cervarix™: a vaccine for the prevention of HPV 16, 18-associated cervical cancer

Review

(2719) Views  (2829) Full article downloads

Authors: Archana Monie, Chien-Fu Hung, Richard Roden, T-C Wu

Published Date March 2008 Volume 2008:2(1) Pages 107 - 113

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/BTT.S1877

Archana Monie¹, Chien-Fu Hung^1,2, Richard Roden^1,2,4, T-C Wu^1,2,3,4

¹Departments of Pathology, ²Obstetrics and Gynecology, ³Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, and ⁴Oncology, ⁵Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Abstract: Cervical cancer continues to be the second largest cause of cancer deaths in women worldwide. Persistent infection with high-risk types of human papillomavirus (HPV) is a necessary cause of cervical cancer. Thus, prophylactic vaccination against HPV is an attractive strategy to prevent cervical cancer. Current strategies for the development of safe and effective preventive vaccines are based on the induction of neutralizing antibodies against the major capsid protein, L1 of HPV. Cervarix™ is one of the preventive HPV vaccines that has been approved in the Europe and Australia and is currently under review by the US Food and Drug Administration. Cervarix is composed of HPV16 and HPV18 L1 virus-like particles (VLPs) formulated in ASO4 adjuvant. Vaccination with Cervarix has been shown to protect women against a high proportion of precursor lesions of cervical cancer caused by these two HPV types. This review explores the various features of this new vaccine candidate and discusses the future directions in the field of HPV vaccine development.

Keywords: HPV, L1, VLP, vaccine, Cervarix