Last summer, a certain flyer on the pin board got my attention:
A new HPV vaccine is currently under study at the AKH Vienna.
Well, what is the difference between this new vaccine and the “old” one?
The human papillomavirus vaccine GARDASIL® which is currently on the market is quadrivalent. This means that it prevents the infection of 4 different types of human papillomaviruses. The protection is directed against two types (HPV-16 and HPV-18) which can cause cervical cancer, and two other types (HPV-6 and HPV-11) which are responsible for the formation of genital warts.
The new HPV vaccine under study is a nine-valent vaccine. It consists, as the previous one, of hollow virus-like particles assembled from recombinant HPV coat proteins. The nine-valent vaccine is meant to protect against 5 additional HPV types. In this study, the new vaccine is compared to the quadrivalent one.
