Fol. Biol. 2006, 52, 45-46
Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and HPV-Associated Tumour Vaccines
Human papillomaviruses were found to be closely associated with cervical cancer (CC) and some other, less common anogenital carcinomas, with genital warts (condyloma accuminata), cutaneous warts, epidermodysplasia verruciformis, laryngeal papillomas and, less frequently, also with oropharyngeal and particularly tonsillar carcinomas. Of more than 100 HPV types characterized until now, at least 11 have been classified as high-risk types and detected by molecular and immunological methods in human tumour tissue. The most important problems are connected with CC. Whereas in US the CC is the 11th most common cancer among women with an estimated 10,370 new cases and 3,710 deaths in 2005, worldwide and among women in developing countries where effective screening programmes are often lacking, CC is the second most common cancer and leading cause of cancer-related death (Steinbrook, 2006). For comparison, in the Czech Republic CC is the fifth most common cancer with 1,000–1,200 new cases per year.
Funding
The work of the author reviewed in this Editorial was partly supported by grants Nos. NR/7807-3 and NR/8004-3 from the Grant Agency of the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic; No. 301/04/0492 from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic; No. A500520605 from the Grant Agency of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and by the League Against Cancer, Prague.
References
Copyright
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.