The Cervical Cancer Working Group, Department of Biotechnology, New Delhi, India.
Two HPV vaccines are now available to India, a country that has one sixth of the world's population and one third of the world's cervical cancer burden. The currently approved vaccines will not work in cases of pre-existing infection. There is therefore an urgent need to develop cost effective, robust, sensitive and specific diagnostic systems if a population based vaccine strategy is planned. This program looks at the distribution of eighteen high-risk HPV subtypes in different geographical areas. The first measure of success was the development of a robust cost effective detection protocol and system for 18 oncogenic HPVs, which has now been further developed into a commercial kit through a joint venture between DBT and a molecular diagnostics company. The study also looked for specific Indian variations in the HPV genes that are of significance to vaccine development and response. Interesting mutations have now been detected in the L1 protein, critical to the vaccine's immune response. Indegenious vaccine development, both prophylactic and therapeutic, is another critical component of the program. The vaccine candidate genes have already been expressed, viral particles produced and transferred to a biotech company for scale up studies. Efforts are on to produce chimera proteins that may serve both therapeutic and prophylactic purposes. The immune responses to these vaccine candidates are also being analyzed in specific animal models. It is therefore clear that India is well on its way to developing anti HPV strategies including vaccine development and molecular diagnostics.
