Chemical Engineering Seminar

Human papillomavirus (HPV) infections are the most common sexually transmitted disease worldwide. HPV-6 and 11 cause 94% of benign venereal warts of men and women. The most common carcinogenic HPVs, -16 and –18, cause 70% of cervical cancer, the second most common cause of cancer deaths in women worldwide. The impact of HPV has been underestimated because infections by the carcinogenic HPVs are not clinically visible in males and females, until women develop cervical cancer. HPVs infect the immature and mature squamous epithelia of skin and mucosal surfaces. As a known causative risk factor in virtually all cervical cancers, HPVs cause many anogenital cancers, up to 50% of head and neck cancers, and as many as 20% of all lung cancers. Although age-adjusted curves for most cancer deaths have remained the same for the last 50 years, this will change with the introduction of a vaccine that is 95-100% efficaeous against HPV type-specific infections. HPV vaccines are composed of self-assembled genetically-engineered major coat proteins (L1) of the virus, resulting in viruslike particles (VLPs). This vaccine does not contain viral oncoprotein proteins or viral genomic DNA. VLPs of HPVs represent conformationally-dependent immunodominant neutralizing epitopes found on the surface of native virions, and induce protective immunity against the same type of PV infection as well as the disease caused by that virus type.

Dr. A. Bennett “Ben” Jenson is a graduate of Baylor College of Medicine and a board-certified human pathologist. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Scripps Clinical and Research Foundation and worked as a researcher at NIDR, NIH. Later, in Georgetown University, he practiced surgical and autopsy pathology. Dr. Ghim has completed her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Korea. She then went to France to complete her Ph.D. at the University of Lyon with highest honor, and was then trained at the Pasteur Institute.

In 1989, at the Georgetown University, Drs. Ghim and Jenson, along with Dr. Schlegel, started work on the human vaccine against HPV. They came to the University of Louisville, James Graham Brown Cancer Center, in 2002. In 2006, FDA approved their vaccine as the first cancer vaccine in the United States as Gardasil, which protects human against the two most common cancer-causing strains of HPV. They are currently working on a next-generation of vaccine that can be produced in genetically modified tobacco plants, to develop a low-cost and more effective vaccine. This is a joint venture with the Owensboro Cancer Research Program. They are also helping for a therapeutic trial for the women with advanced cervical cancer in India.

Among numerous awards that they have received over the years, the most recent one is the First Mary Breckenridge Pioneer in Women's Health Award on September 12, 2008 by Eleanor Jordan, Executive Director, Office of Governor Kentucky Commission on Women, and Dr. Daniel Monglardo, Lieutenant Governor of the Commonwealth.

One of the 2008 Novel Prize winners in Medicine went to German scientist Dr. Harald zur Hausen, for the discovery of the "human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer.” The discovery was made in the early 1980s. Dr. Jenson is a close colleague of Dr. zur Hausen.