HPV Vaccine Treatment Trials Proliferate, Diversify

Extract

A new cervical cancer vaccine trial opens this month at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, bringing to at least six the number of human papillomavirus vaccine trials in the United States and abroad that have begun enrolling patients in just the past 9 months. Prior to May 1996, only three trials had opened and none was under way before 1994.

The recent jump in the number of trials has raised hopes for the future of vaccine therapy in cervical cancer, although differences among the trials make the details of that future still far from clear.

“I don't think there's much doubt that vaccine treatments and trials will increase,” said Michael Steller, M.D., who is leading one of three trials at the National Cancer Institute. “But there's no way to predict how the successful vaccines will be constructed or who will get them.”

All the trials now under way are small phase I or phase II studies, and all are testing vaccines that target two virus types, HPV 16 and HPV 18, known to be associated with most cervical cancers. But beyond these similarities lies an array of different vaccine formulations and a variety of patients (see sidebar).