Developmental History of HPV Prophylactic Vaccines

Abstract

Prophylactic human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines are a recent addition to our ­vaccine arsenal, first becoming commercially available in mid-2006. Although they have not yet made a public health impact, they likely represent an important ­addition to cancer prevention strategies. Their development is the result of a ­fortunate temporal convergence of two distinct lines of scientific enquiry. One ­produced the molecular biological and epidemiological evidence that established, beyond a reasonable doubt, that HPV infection is the central cause of cervical ­cancer. The second was the development of molecular technologies for production of the L1 virus-like particles (VLPs) vaccines and serological assays to measure their immunogenicity. HPV vaccine development and clinical testing was based on both critical lessons learned in the development of other vaccines and solutions to unique problems that arose because of the specific biology of HPVs and their ­relationship to neoplastic disease. This review offers our reflection on some of the milestones in the preclinical and clinical development of HPV prophylactic vaccine and includes some of our personal experiences in the enterprise. It is not meant to be a comprehensive review of the subject.