Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a significant health burden and leading cause of virus-induced cancers. The current commercial vaccines are genotype specific and provide little therapeutic benefit to patients with existing HPV infections. Host entry mechanisms represent an excellent target for alternative therapeutics, but HPV receptor use, the details of cell attachment, and host entry are inade...

Cervical cancer and its precursor intra-epithelial lesions are linked to infection by a subset of human papillomavirus (HPV) types, the so-called “high-risk” HPVs, the most prevalent being HPV16 and HPV18. Two prophylactic vaccines containing combinations of the major capsid protein (L1) of HPV16 and HPV18 have been shown to efficiently prevent infection by inducing capsid-specific neutralizing...

There are solid research data to support the construction of a quadrivalent (HPV6, 11, 16 and 18) L1 VLP vaccine. Accordingly, the two HR-HPV types (16 and 18) cover around 70% of all CCs, 50–70% of high-grade CIN lesions, 70% of other HPV-related genital cancers, and some 25% of low-grade CIN lesions. Similarly, in males, 70% of all anal cancers are caused by HPV16 and HPV18, as are 70% of all...

Cryoelectron microscopy images of HPV16 pseudovirions (PsV) depict that each pentamer of L1 can be occluded with a monomer of L2. Further research suggests that an N-terminal external loop of L2 exists, which is the target of neutralizing and cross-neutralizing antibodies. Here we show that N-terminal L2 cysteine residues, Cys22 and Cys28, have overlapping and independent structural roles, whic...

Human papillomavirus 6b L1 virus-like particles (VLPs) were successfully expressed using Bombyx mori nucleopolyhedrovirus (BmNPV) bacmid expression system and rapidly purified using size exclusion chromatography after ultracentrifugation procedure and characterized by capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE). The average capillary electrophoresis migration time was 11 min with the relative standard...

Cervical cancer accounts for about two-thirds of all cancer cases linked etiologically to Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). 15 oncogenic HPV types can cause cervical cancer, of which HPV16 and HPV18 combinedly account for about 70% of it. So, effective epitope design for the clinically relevant HPV types 16 and 18 would be of major medical benefit. Here, a comprehensive analysis is carried out to pr...

The first step of papillomavirus infection is believed to be binding of major capsid protein L1 to the cell surface without involvement of minor capsid protein L2, but the viral infectivity can be neutralized either by anti-L1 or anti-L2 antibody. To understand the role of L2 in human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, we examined a segment of HPV type 16 (HPV16) L2, which contains a neutralizatio...

AIM To investigate the relation of human papillomavirus (HPV) and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) in Iranian patients as compared to normal controls. METHODS Using MY09/MY11 consensus primers, we compared the prevalence of a HPV L1 gene in tumor tissues from 38 ESCC cases and biopsied tissues from 38 endoscopically normal Iranian individuals. We also compared the presence of HPV16 a...

Genital human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is the primary cause of cervical cancer in women. Although the HPV recombinant L1 protein was recently licensed as an available vaccine, it has numerous shortcomings. New vaccination strategies should be considered. To enable the design of a prophylactic and therapeutic low-cost vaccine candidate, chimeric HPV16 L1DeltaC34E7N1-60 capsomeres were prod...