Hi all --

I certainly hope that the vaccine will prove to work -- there have been some articles this summer on the potential of vaccine-mediated treatment for virally-induced cancers and all state that this may be the treatment of the future. Certainly the cell-culture study by Rampias which found that, once the HP viral genes were deactivated, the cancerous cells died quickly, is promising. We know this is undoubtedly years away. Still, as Haddad wrote after the 2007 ASCO meetings (in his summary of HPV and head/neck cancer presentations):

"Research in this area is still preliminary, and previous experience has proven this field to be quite challenging. Nevertheless, newer technologies might make this possible, and the approach described by Rampias and colleagues[12] is promising. If targeting [of viral genes]proves feasible, these findings will have represented a major breakthrough. The ability to treat these cancers without chemotherapy and radiation, but instead with gene therapy and antiviral therapy, is certainly appealing, but we expect that it will be a long time before we see this work come to fruition. In the meantime, our focus should be on fuller utilization of the HPV vaccine and public education measures.

Conclusion
HPV-related head and neck cancer represents a new entity that is now well defined. The practicing oncologist needs to be aware of these new findings, and HPV testing, with PCR or FISH, should now be performed routinely. For now, results will have significant prognostic though not therapeutic implications. Still, changes come rapidly in this field, and we expect that different treatments will be available to these patients in the near future."

Gail