What other HPV vaccine trials are taking place?
Dr. Lowy: Merck has embarked on a large phase III trial with a vaccine against HPV types 16, 18, 6, 11. (Types 6 and 11 cause genital warts.) Tens of thousands of women in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia are involved. GlaxoSmithKline is testing a vaccine against types 16 and 18. The question now is, can you make a commercial vaccine that has multiple components that will be highly protective. Merck already has immunological data that they reported in October at the HPV international conference. They found that the immunological response to HPV-16 in the four-component vaccine is as good as the response to HPV-16 alone. In other words, there’s no suggestion of attenuation of the response as a consequence of giving multiple HPV types. It seems like everything looks extremely hopeful for these vaccine trials. Dogs, rabbits, and calves were protected against papillomavirus infection with similar vaccines, and the early results from human trials seem to be very
