Study on Human Vaccines for Oncogenic Viruses and Perspectives for Tumor Antigens Induced by Virus

The Variola major, the virus that causes the smallpox, lethal virus in the 30% of the cases, was
eraticated in 1979 in the human species, thanks to a capillary vaccination on global scale.
Recently the Word Health Organization (WHO) declared that India and Southeast Asia are polio-free,
really a great achivement since the vaccine for polio, an infectious desease that can cause paralysis,
was certificated safe and useful only 60 years ago.
The vaccine for the virus, responsible for hepatitis B infection HBV, is able to prevent 50% of all liver
cancers. Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) have been correlated with the cervical cancer (genotypes 16
and 18 particularly oncogenic in humans): the USA Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2006
released the first vaccine against HPV.
Finally, the ability of the immune system to recognize a tumor-associated antigen enables the
development of a vaccine approach for therapeutic application and represents a main target of this
field of research.
Long years of research were required for busting new systems to fight cancer. Research is going to
obtain the complete sequence by proteomics approaches, in order to achieve adequate antigen
preparations that might be used to generate assays for a specific anticancer vaccine.