IN RESPONSE TO LOW NATIONAL VACCINATION RATES for the human papillomavirus, or HPV, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in January joined with the 68 other U.S. National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers in issuing a statement urging for increased vaccination in adolescent girls and boys for the prevention of many types of HPV-related cancers in adulthood. The virus, which is sexually transmitted, impacts nearly all men and women at some point in their lives and can lead to cervical, anal, vaginal, penile, vulvar, and head and neck cancers.
Fred Hutch and the other cancer centers named in the statement called upon the nation's physicians, parents and adolescents to prevent these many types of cancer through the HPV vaccine.
The vaccine's roots lie in the laboratory of Fred Hutch's Dr. Denise Galloway, as well as laboratories in Australia and the National Institutes of Health, where Galloway and fellow investigators accomplished the groundbreaking step of getting a key viral gene to assemble into particles that look like HPV, which became the basis of the vaccine.
"When I joined Fred Hutch in 1978, we didn't know what caused cervical cancer, and now we have a vaccine that can prevent HPV infections and the cancers they cause. It is incredibly gratifying to have been part of that discovery," Galloway said. "Wouldn't it be great if there was a high rate of vaccine usage to actually eliminate HPV-caused cancers?"
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HPV infections are responsible for approximately 27,000 new cancer diagnoses each year in the U.S. Several vaccines are now available that could prevent the majority of them.