Cervical cancer continues to be the second largest cause of
cancer deaths in women worldwide.
Persistent infection with high-risk types of human papillomavirus (HPV) is a necessary cause of
cervical cancer. Thus, prophylactic vaccination against HPV is an attractive strategy to prevent
cervical cancer. Current strategies for the development of safe and effective preventive
vaccines are based on the induction of
neutralizing antibodies against the major
capsid protein, L1 of HPV.
Cervarix() is one of the preventive
HPV vaccines that has been approved in the Europe and Australia and is currently under review by the US Food and Drug Administration.
Cervarix is composed of HPV16 and HPV18 L1 virus-like particles (VLPs) formulated in ASO4 adjuvant. Vaccination with
Cervarix has been shown to protect women against a high proportion of precursor lesions of
cervical cancer caused by these two HPV types. This review explores the various features of this new
vaccine candidate and discusses the future directions in the field of
HPV vaccine development.