The importance of HPV vaccination today

Excerpt

In the 1930s, Richard Shope [1] unravelled a mystery about an animal hybrid between “jackrabbits” and “antalops”; these mythical “horned” cottontail rabbits called Jackalops were infected by an oncogenic viral agent. Half a century later, Nobel Prize laureate Harald zur Hausen [2] postulated that certain human papillomaviruses (HPV) cause cervical cancer by sexual transmission. Disappointingly, HPV-6 or -11 detected in genital warts were not found in cancer tissue. Instead, in 1985, weak hybridizing signals cross-reacting with HPV-11 revealed the distantly related high-risk HPV types 16 and 18 to be present in cervical cancer. With support of his staff around Lutz Gissmann and in a worldwide academic concerted action, the mechanisms of HPV-induced carcinogenesis were subsequently elucidated. For example, HPV hampers apoptosis via deregulation of tumor suppressor functions of p53 and retinoblastoma protein, leading to immortalized (not yet malignant) cell lines vulnerable to second steps of transformation. Yet, most HPV infections resolve spontaneously. Thus, HPV testing without a wise concept of management for positive results could lead to unnecessary overtreatment. …