HPV vaccines: what remains to be done?

Abstract

Interview by Lauren Constable, Commissioning Editor

Harald zur Hausen studied medicine at the Universities of Bonn, Hamburg and Düsseldorf (Germany) and received his MD in 1960. After a period of 3 years as a senior scientist at the Institute of Virology of the University of Würzburg (Germany), he was appointed in 1972 as Chairman and Professor of Virology at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany). In 1977 he moved to a similar position at the University of Freiburg. From 1983 until 2003 zur Hausen was appointed Scientific Director of the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (German Cancer Research Center) in Heidelberg before retiring from this position in 2003. During the early 1980s he was involved in the isolation of HPV-16 and HPV-18 from cervical cancer biopsies and hypothesized that cervical cancer was caused by papillomaviruses. This led to a better understanding of the mechanism of HPV-mediated carcinogenesis and eventually to the development of preventative vaccines against HPV-16 and HPV-18. He received the Nobel Prize for Medicine, 2008 for his discovery of human papillomaviruses causing cervical cancer. In addition, zur Hausen has received a number of other national and international awards, among them the Robert-Koch-Prize; the Charles S Mott Prize of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation; the Federation of the European Cancer Societies Clinical Research Award; the Paul-Ehrlich-Ludwig Darmstätter-Prize; the Jung-Prize, Hamburg, the Charles Rudolphe Brupbacher Prize, Zürich; the Prince Mahidol Award, Bangkok, the Raymond Bourgine Award, Paris; the Coley-Award, New York; the Life Science Achievement Award of the American Association for Cancer Research, San Diego; and the German Special Order of Merit with Star. He received 16 honorary MD and PhD doctorates from the Universities of Chicago (USA), Umeå (Sweden), Prague (Czech Republic), Salford (UK), Helsinki (Finland), Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany), Würzburg (Germany), Ferrara (Italy), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Madrid (Spain), Melbourne (Australia), Salerno (Italy), Los Angeles (CA, USA), Bucaramanga (Colombia), Besancon (France) and Jerusalem (Israel).

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The author has no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.