Measles Virus as a Vector for the HPV Vaccine Development

Abstract

The Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine prevents infection with certain species of human papillomavirus associated with the development of cervical cancer, genital warts and some less common cancers. But, the development of vaccine that prevents HPV infection represents an important opportunity to prevent cervical cancer whilst a therapeutic immunization would be valuable in treating premalignant and malignant disease. Attenuated MV strains are highly efficient and safe vaccines, typically preventing recipients from Measles for their entire life. To benefit from these extraordinary vaccination properties in the present study MV cDNA plasmids have been constructed to produce precisely initiated and terminated MV anti-genome related to the Edmonston B vaccine strains. These transgenes were expressed at different levels, according to their genomic position and were stably maintained over many viral generations. The ability to construct new recombinant and chimeric MVs opens the prospect to develop new vaccines based on MV. In an effort to generate an inexpensive candidate HPV vaccine with improved prophylactic potential, a MV vector based on Berna-commercial Measles vaccine strain (Edmonston- Zagreb) inducing against HPV was developed.