A summary of the 25th International Papillomavirus Conference 2009: Vaccines, screening, epidemiology and therapeutics

The 25th International Papillomavirus Conference was held in Malmo, Sweden, on May 8–14, 2009. The conference encompassed all areas of papillomavirus (PV) research, from clinical vaccinology to molecular biology. This review highlights some of the 237 presentations and 887 abstracts which were presented and summarizes sessions on prophylactic vaccines, screening, epidemiology and therapeutics. Important advances included identification of variants in four genes associated with HPV persistence, new HPV detection are likely new infections and not latency reactivation, and development of effective DNA vaccines that targets E6/E7 genes of HPV11. Also, many studies from different countries demonstrated that HPV vaccination provided sustained protection and substantial reduction of disease burden in both women and men, and in HIV-infected neonates. All the references cited are from the abstract book of the IPV Conference. See http://www.hpv2009.org/.