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SUMMARY:HPV vaccines - are they doing their job? - Professor Margaret Stan
 ley\, University of Cambridge
DTSTART:20131015T180000Z
DTEND:20131015T193000Z
UID:TALK48324@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Joseph Hooton
DESCRIPTION:Benign and malignant disease caused by HPV (human papillomavir
 us) constitutes a global public health problem. Genital warts are the comm
 onest viral sexually transmitted infection and 5% of all cancers are HPV a
 ssociated. The unfolding of the HPV story started in the 1970’s with the
  recognition that HPVs were a large family of viruses that included types 
 that caused cancer particularly cancer of the cervix\, a disease that kill
 s 250\,000 women each year. It has resulted in the development of two prop
 hylactic virus like particle (VLP) vaccines using sophisticated recombinan
 t molecular techniques and protein expression. Both vaccines target infect
 ion by the oncogenic HPV ’s 16 and 18 and one also targets the low risk 
 HPVs 6 and 11 that cause genital and laryngeal warts. These vaccines are n
 ow included in the national immunisation programmes in many countries in t
 he industrialised world and population effectiveness in women is now being
  demonstrated in those countries with high vaccine coverage. Since HPV ass
 ociated cancers in men are increasing in incidence an issue of contemporar
 y debate is extending HPV vaccination to adolescent boys.\n\nHPV VLP vacci
 nes are well tolerated and highly immunogenic generating serum neutralisin
 g antibody that persists for at least 9 years and a robust recall response
  at 60 months post vaccination. At present the assumption is that the prot
 ection achieved by these vaccines against HPV induced disease is mediated 
 via serum neutralising IgG and this is consistent with what is known of th
 e mechanism of HPV infection in the genital tract. Emerging evidence shows
  that very low antibody concentrations are protective but at the present t
 here is no immune correlate of protection\, disease prevention remains the
  only measure of the effectiveness of HPV vaccines.
LOCATION:Yusuf Hamied Theatre\, Christ's College
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