RESEARCH ARTICLE
Therapeutic Vaccines Against Human Papillomavirus and Cervical Cancer
Angel Cid-Arregui*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2009Volume: 3
First Page: 67
Last Page: 83
Publisher Id: TOVJ-3-67
DOI: 10.2174/1874357900903010067
Article History:
Received Date: 21/7/2009Revision Received Date: 11/8/2009
Acceptance Date: 20/8/2009
Electronic publication date: 23/10/2009
Collection year: 2009
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Cervical cancer and its precursor intra-epithelial lesions are linked to infection by a subset of so-called “highrisk” human papillomavirus types, which are estimated to infect nearly four hundred million women worldwide. Two prophylactic vaccines have been commercialized recently targeting HPV16 and 18, the most prevalent viral types found in cervical cancer, which operate through induction of capsid-specific neutralizing antibodies. However, in patients with persistent infection these vaccines have not been found to protect against progression to neoplasia. Attempts are being made to develop therapeutic vaccines targeting nonstructural early viral proteins. Among these, E6 and E7 are the preferred targets, since they are essential for induction and maintenance of the malignant phenotype and are constitutively expressed by the transformed epithelial cells. Here are reviewed the most relevant potential vaccines based on HPV early antigens that have shown efficacy in preclinical models and that are being tested in clinical studies, which should determine their therapeutic capacity for eradicating HPV-induced premalignant and malignant lesions and cure cervical cancer.
