Hopkins Voices

An Interview with Connie Trimble, M.D., on the Development of a Cervical Cancer Vaccine

	Connie Trimble, M.D., director of the Cervical Cancer Dysplasia Center.

Connie Trimble, M.D., Director of the Cervical Cancer Dysplasia Center, talks about the vaccine that could stop human papillomavirus (HPV) infection from turning into cervical cancer, the second leading cause of cancer death in women.

Even when cancer vaccines show promise in mice, they are seldom effective in humans. What is different about the HPV vaccine you are working on?

Most therapeutic vaccines have been tested only in people who have already tried every other treatment option. But by then, they are so sick that their immune system cannot really respond to the vaccines. We are testing our vaccine in otherwise healthy women who are positive for HPV 16, the virus type that is found in more than half of all cervical cancers and also in the lesions that occur before cancer develops. Our vaccine—it has taken ten years to develop!—helps the body launch an immune response that kills the infected cells.

If a woman has an abnormal Pap smear, can you really afford to wait and see if the vaccine triggers a human being’s immune system?

Before we started the phase I clinical trial, we carefully observed nearly 200 volunteers who all had pre-cancerous lesions. They were angels. They were not getting vaccine; they had nothing to gain. They agreed to let us follow them for 15 weeks before we removed their lesions. During this time, we not only found that no one’s lesion got worse, but in about a third of the women, the lesions actually went away on their own, without any treatment. Isn’t that wild? Their immune systems were doing what we want the vaccine to do. So, now we’re in position to find out how the vaccine works, not in the lab, but in people who are “ready” to be cured.

Why is that important?

We all have different genetic and environmental backgrounds. You cannot assume that our patients are going to behave like 70 kg lab mice that all have the same genetic background, the exact same tumor. In the end, it doesn’t really matter what happens in a mouse; it matters what happens in people. There is a huge rate of cervical cancer, and our best chances of curing this disease are in its pre-cancerous stages. That’s what this vaccine is all about.

Learn more about this research