Highlights

Which do you consider to be the best HPV vaccine?

I consider Cervarix to be the best, because while it does not cover all of the types that Gardasil 9 covers, the types that it does cover have a much higher antibody titer. They have a superior adjuvant, and if we are truly going to get uptake of this vaccine, we need to be giving it to five-year-olds, which means that it needs to have a long duration of action. I think GSK was forced to stop developing any further vaccines with this adjuvant, because of Merck’s rapid market domination, but would have added other HPV types to it should there have been a market that was available to it.

After the introduction of the nine-valent form of Gardasil, are there still unmet clinical needs for HPV vaccines?

Well, certainly it would be lovely if we would have an LT01 vaccine that would give you pan-protection against all HPV types, and I think that would be the Holy Grail, but again only if we either combine it with an efficient adjuvant, or that we recognize that it would be like a tetanus shot, you need boosters every 10 years or 15 years. So, I certainly think that there’s an appetite for having pan-protection, the question is whether or not we can scientifically create that.