What is Cervarix?

Question: What is Cervarix?

In October 2009, the FDA approved a second cervical cancer vaccine for use in the US. This vaccine, Cervarix, was designed to protect against the two types of HPV that cause the majority of cervical cancers. Unlike the first HPV vaccine approved in the US, Gardasil, Cervarix was not formulated to protect against the strains of HPV most commonly responsible for causing genital warts. This may make Cervarix more palatable to those who think protecting young people from cancer is socially acceptable but preventing other forms of STDs is not -- although I don't believe that was the logic behind Cervarix's development.

Answer: Cervarix is an HPV vaccine designed to protect against HPV 16 and HPV 18 - the two HPV strains responsible for the vast majority of cervical cancers in the US. Cervarix had already been available overseas for several years when it was first approved for use in U.S. women between the ages of 10 and 25.

Like Gardasil, Cervarix is not made from live or killed virus -- so people should have no fear of getting an HPV infection from the vaccine. Instead, a special type of bacterium is genetically modified to make a protein (capsid protein L1) from the outside of the HPV virus, which is then purified and assembled into virus like particles (VLPs). The complete vaccine, which contains two types of VLPs and an aluminum-based adjuvant, is given in three doses that are injected into the muscle at 0, 1, and 6 months (for reference, the second Gardasil dose is at 2 months).

It is worth noting that although Cervarix was only designed to protect against HPV 16 and HPV 18, there is some evidence that this HPV vaccine may also protect against cervical cancer and early pre-cancerous cervical changes caused by other types of HPV, particularly HPV 31.

_Sources:

_{Cervarix Prescribing Information. http://us.gsk.com/products/assets/us_cervarix.pdf Accessed online 11/11/09}