A team that includes two University of Louisville researchers who helped develop Merck’s human papillomavirus vaccine Gardasil is attempting to develop a low-cost HPV vaccine using tobacco plants, the Louisville Courier-Journal reports. A. Bennett Jenson and Shin-je Ghim, who helped develop Gardasil, are working with colleagues on a vaccine that protects against at least 13 HPV strains known to cause cervical cancer. The experimental vaccine would cost about $3 for three doses, compared with about $360 for three doses of Gardasil, the Courier-Journal reports (Ungar, Louisville Courier-Journal, 7/29).

To create the vaccine, the research team created a synthetic gene that expresses the L-2 protein in HPV and inserted it into a tobacco virus to inexpensively “grow” the vaccine, the AP/International Herald Tribune reports. After six to 10 days, the researchers remove the tobacco parts and are left with a protein designed to induce antibodies to protect against the HPV strains (AP/International Herald Tribune, 7/29).

Researchers recently tested the vaccine on five dogs, finding that it protected the dogs from oral canine HPV infection, Kenneth Palmer of the Owensboro Cancer Research Program, who is working with Jenson and Ghim, said. According to the Courier-Journal, the Owensboro Cancer Research Program is a joint project of the University of Louisville and the Owensboro Medical Health System. Palmer said he would like to begin Phase I clinical trials before the end of 2008.

Jenson and Ghim also are working with Partha Basu — head of the department of gynecologic oncology at the Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute in Kolkata, India — on an experimental treatment for late-stage cervical cancer, the Courier-Journal reports. About 120,000 new cervical cancer cases are diagnosed annually in India, of which about 80% are too far advanced for treatment, Basu said, adding that nearly 80,000 women die of the disease annually in the country.

Palmer said that “poverty, lack of screening and spotty access to health care lead to late diagnoses and early death” from cervical cancer and other diseases in India and other developing countries. Merck spokesperson Kristen Eskin said that the company is developing new vaccines that would be available at “dramatically lower prices” in developing countries. Eskin declined to name a specific price for the vaccines, the Courier-Journal reports (Louisville Courier-Journal, 7/29). About 500,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer annually worldwide, and about 80% of the cases and deaths are among women in developing countries because of limited screening and treatment (Kaiser Daily Women’s Health Policy Report, 7/11).