Oral Vaccine Could Offer Palatable Alternative To Parenteral Delivery.(Brief Article)

2001 JUN 20 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) --

by N.R. Saltmarsh, staff medical writer - An oral vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV), the causative agent of cervical cancer, has been brought one step closer to reality by researchers in the United States.

Parenteral delivery of HPV recombinant virus-like particles (VLPs) is already being studied in humans, but the oral equivalent would be a lower-cost and more attractive option, proposed S. Gerber and associates, University of Rochester Medical Center, New York.

"Vaccines formulated for injection generally are more costly, more difficult to administer, and less acceptable to recipients than are mucosally administered vaccines," they noted.

Oral vaccination with HPV type 11 had already shown modest success in mice, wrote Gerber and coauthors in the Journal of Virology, and their work evaluated the potential of VLPs of HPV-16 and HPV-18, which cause almost all cervical cancers.

Not only were these VLPs immunogenic when given orally, but their potency was also enhanced by coadministration with Escherichia coli heat-labile enterotoxin (LT) mutant R192G (LT R192G) and, to a lesser extent, CpG DNA.

Use of these adjuvants "can significantly improve anti-VLP humoral responses in peripheral blood and in genital mucosal secretions," reported ...