[Preventive vaccines and immunotherapy clinical trials against cervical cancer].

Cervical cancer (CC) is a public health problem among women worldwide, especially in emerging nations. To improve CC control, new adjuvant therapeutic strategies are required. Advances in immunology, genomics and proteomics have accelerated our understanding of the genetic and cellular basis of many cancer types. CC is a member of virus-related neoplasms and its initiation and promotion is associated with persistent infection of oncogenic human papillomavirus. During viral infection and associated-transforming developing lesions, the HPVs co-express non-structural and structural proteins. These early or late proteins are the antigenic target of the immune response. The intervention to stimulate the humoral or cellular immune anti-HPV response is the objective of the immunoprevention and immunotherapy against CC. Recently in a controlled phase III trial of HPV type 16 vaccine using virus-like particles of L1 capsid of HPV-16, the incidence was reduced of both HPV-16 infection and HPV-16-related cervical intraepithelial neoplasia. Although preliminary results of immunotherapy clinical trials against CC did not modify the clinical status, they occasionally show improvement of lymphocyte response against HPV. A recent immunotherapy trial using dendritic cells pulsed with HPV-18 E7 oncoprotein as adjuvant resulted in temporal remission and improved performance status in a patient with metastatic CC. New and different vaccine preventive trials against HPV are being put into practice and clinically tested. It is hoped that in the future it may be possible to eradicate cervical cancer. The success of immunotherapy anti-HPV clinical trials in CC patients will be determined at a future time. The scientific basis for the development of papillomavirus prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines against persistent infection and preinvasive-invasive associated cervical lesions along with the present status of immunopreventive and immunotherapy clinical trials against cervical cancer are commented on in this paper.