Humoral Immune Response to Genital Human Papillomavirus Infections

Abstract

It is generally accepted that infection with particular types of human papillomaviruses such as HPV 16 or HPV 18 is the most important event in the development of cervical. cancer and hence diagnosis of and interference with HPV infection is expected to be of relevance for cancer detection and control. Because of the high prevalence of asymptomatic genital. HPV infection, the daignostic value of HPV DNA detection in clinical. materials has still to be evaluated. Serology of HPV infections, on the other hand is so far only poorly developed becuase of the lack of suitable experimental. systems for virus replication and production of viral. proteins that can be used as antigens in serological. assays. This restriction is particularly important in case of the mucosotropic HPV types since also in clinical. lesions their replication is very low thus prepartion of viral. proteins in sufficient quantities has been impossible. With the advances of recombinant DNA technology the genomic clones of all different HPV types became available and expression of individual. genes can be achived in a variety of prokaryotic and eukaryotic systems such as E.coli, yeast, Baculovirus and Vaccinia. A description of the vectors used and a critical. evaluation of the assays currently employed for the detection of HPV-specific antibodies are given elsewhere ¹. The initial. information about the humoral. immune response against genital. papillomavrisues were obtained when fusion proteins expressed in E.coli were used in Western blot assays ^2,3. Subsequently, in the majority of studies the ELISA technique was employed taking advantage either of synthetic peptide or, more recently of complete viral. proteins. Another approach to measure HPV-specific antibodies directed against conformational. epitopes was introduced by Müller et al⁴ who used viral. proteins which were produced by an in vitro transcription/translation system for radio-immunoprecipitation (RIPA).