High-risk human papillomaviruses (hrHPV) are responsible for 5% of cancers worldwide and ~630,000 new cancer cases annually. Persistent hrHPV infections are the cause of 99.7% of cervical cancer cases and contribute significantly to other anogenital and oropharyngeal cancers. Despite effective preventative HPV vaccines, such as those given to teenagers in national vaccination programmes that are cutting cervical cancer rates in targeted populations, HPV-associated cancers remain common in unvaccinated populations and numbers are rising, with huge socioeconomic disparities.
In this award funded by Cancer Research UK, Dr Karin Hellner and Dr Gemma Hancock (Nuffield Department of Women’s and Reproductive Health) and Dr Cesar Lopez-Camacho (Jenner Institute) will design and pre-clinically test a new vaccine to treat chronic HPV infection with the aim of reducing the risk of HPV-associated cancers. Unlike previous therapeutic HPV vaccines, this vaccine will be designed to target more types of HPV to increase the effectiveness of the vaccine in the UK and globally.
In addition to the researchers, the HPVax team also includes members of the public who have been affected by HPV infection and/or HPV-associated cancers and will consult with larger groups of affected people several times during the course of the project. This will feed into broader work by the Oxford Cancer PPI group on understanding views towards vaccines to prevent cancer.