IN SITU detection of early stages and late stages HPV infection

Abstract

Embodiments of the invention provide methods, polyclonal antibodies, monoclonal antibodies, assays, and kits for detecting HPV infection, including infection by various HPV genotypes, early and / or late HPV-associated or HPV-specific proteins or antibodies. Mononoclonal antibodies are used to detect oncogenic high risk and low risk HPV types in a single assay, which is not limited to assay type or format. Useful tools for specific detection of invasive cervical cancer are provided. Cervical cancer biomarkers are identified and can be used in a detection method for early stage precancerous lesions as well as late stage cancer progression.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims benefit of U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 61 / 131,991, filed Jun. 13, 2008, and U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 61 / 192,912, filed Sep. 22, 2008. Each of the aforementioned related patent applications is herein incorporated by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Infection by human papillomaviruses (HPV) at specific epithelium cells to induce epithelial proliferations plays an important role for cervical carcinogenesis. About 99 percent of confirmed cervical cancer cases are found to be associated with HPV infection with biopsy-confirmed squamous intraepithelial lesions (SIL) or cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN). The incidence of HPV infection, primarily transmitted through sexual contact, is highest among young women and about 20 millions of sexually active men and women worldwide are currently infected. Approximately 1% of the population has genital warts and 4% of women have...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

"The invention provides various methods and antibodies for detecting HPV infections in humans using immunological assays. These methods can be performed on clinical samples, such as cervical tissue, and can help identify both early and late stages of infection. The antibodies used in the assays are highly specific to HPV viral proteins and can stain both the nuclear and cytoplasmic portions of infected cells. The invention also provides a kit for performing these immunological assays on clinical samples. Overall, the invention provides a reliable and effective tool for detecting and monitoring HPV infections in humans."

Problems solved by technology

The presence of these lesions, preferentially observed in women aged 35-40 yrs, are at high risk of progression toward invasive cervical cancer.

However, due to subjective test criteria, there are various drawbacks for pap smear tests: difficulty in obtaining samples, poor inter- and intra-observer agreement, high rates of false negatives nd false positives, requiring specialized labs staffed with highly trained personnel, and inability to identify the majority of HPV-infected human subjects.

Detecting HPV infection by nucleic acid tests, such as “DNA Hybrid Capture”, has been developed with high assay sensitivity, but are still not ideal, due to not only its high cost, assay operation procedures, the requirements for facility, equipment, and highly trained personnel, but also its very low positive predictive value (PPV) in cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) testing samples.

In addition, DNA testing could not differentiate disease stages after HPV infection nor the diagnosis of different cell lesions (e.g., cannot differentiate LSIL from HSIL, nor CIN lesions from non-transforming latent or remissive viral infection).

Known protocols for producing monoclonal antibodies are generally unsuitable for the production of anti-HPV monoclonal antibodies and cannot be used in immunocytochemical diagnostic tests performed on human subjects of general population.

In addition, three problems exist in clinical HPV detection.

Secondly, there are too many HPV types and most HPV types present in clinical samples are not known or systemically identified due to the lack of available antibodies.

Third, HPV virus can not be cultured in labs by standard tissue culture techniques.

Thus, there is no available HPV proteins purified to large quantities as immunogens for generating anti-HPV antibodies, and there is no available HPV proteins or purified anti-HPV antibodies to recognize anti-viral antibodies or viral proteins present in clinical samples for clinical HPV detection.

Infections by only about 15 HPV types (out of more than 100 available HPV types) are at high risk of developing into cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) or cervical cancer.

However, some progressive cervical cancer cases are reported to be infected by low risk HPV types, while infection of some high risk HPV types will never progress into cervical cancer.

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