Life Sciences Luncheon with Australian of the Year Professor Ian Frazer

Emilie Allen — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 16:00:00 GMT

On Monday 26^th June, Advance members joined Head of the University of Queensland Centre for Immunology and Cancer Research and 2006 Australian of the Year – Professor Ian Frazer – for an intimate lunch at the Australian Consulate in New York. Professor Frazer has been researching the link between papilloma viruses and cancer for the past 20 years, seeking ways to treat these viruses and reduce the incidence of cancer.

Each year there are 400,000 new cases of cervical cancer internationally. In Australia, it’s the eighth most common cancer, with over a thousand new cases diagnosed and over 300 deaths each year. In the USA, there are 10,000 new cases and 4,000 deaths each year. However, the true tragedy of this disease is in the developing world. Cervical cancer is the number one cause of cancer death for women, with some 200,000 dying each year. And this figure is widely held to significantly under-estimate the actual number. The financial costs are impossible and meaningless to calculate. The societal cost is enormous.

The vast majority, 99.7%, of cervical cancer is caused by infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV). If a vaccine against HPV could be given to all women in the developing world, the annual number of deaths from cervical cancer could, theoretically, drop from over 200,000 to about 600. Thanks to the work of Dr. Ian Frazer and the late Dr. Jian Zhou (University of Queensland), a vaccine against HPV is no longer a fantasy.

In November 1991, Drs. Frazer and Zhou reported they had created ‘virion-like particles’ (VLPs) - essentially synthetic, non-harmful viruses - that mimicked HPV. It was subsequently shown that VLPs were able to induce the immune system to protect against infection with ‘real’ HPV. What followed was a remarkably rapid transition from theory to market. Canny development and licensing by the Australian biotechnology company, CSL Limited, resulted in two pharmaceutical companies, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, in a head to head race to develop a VLP-based HPV vaccine (and will result in ~7% of the world-wide profits returning to Australia!). In June 2006, the US FDA approved Gardasil™ (Merck), which has been shown to be 100% effective against cervical cancer in clinical trials.

In his Advance presentation, Dr. Frazer outlined the global burden of cervical cancer and gave some history on HPV and cervical cancer, including how the connection between a sexually-transmitted disease (STD) and cervical cancer was made (in 1842, Dr. Rigoni-Stern reported that prostitutes got cervical cancer but nuns did not), and the discovery, by Dr. Harald zur Hausen, that HPV was the causative agent. In fact, Drs. Frazer and zur Hausen were in New York to receive the William B. Coley Award from the New York-based, Cancer Research Institute. One suspects that this will not be the last award that these two gentlemen share.

Dr. Frazer explained that uneasiness about vaccinating young girls against an STD, has been dispelled by data showing that the 9-12 year age range is the time-frame for inducing the best immunological protection. However, a small fraction of the socio-political spectrum remain somewhat unconvinced in both Australia and the USA. Rounding off the lively and amusing presentation, Dr. Frazer described how his commitment to ensuring the vaccine gets to where it is needed, has resulted in him being a consultant to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has committed to undertake this Herculean effort.

Despite the problems of social acceptance and, more importantly, the logistics of delivering the vaccine to women in the developing world, the impact of VLP technology against infectious agents cannot be over-estimated. There were more than a few chuckles when Dr. Frazer showed the cover of the Weekend Australian Magazine on which he was featured, with the blazing headline, “God’s Gift to Women.” However, with up to 25% of all cancers caused by infectious agents, including Helicobater pylori for stomach cancer (an Australian discovery that netted Drs. Barry Marshall and Robin Warren the 2005 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology), we might have to reconsider the restriction of “Women” in that title.

Listen to the MP3 Podcast of the event

1. Welcome - Elissa Barry
2. Opening Remarks - The Hon John Olsen
3. Introduction - Sarah White
4. Ian Frazer's Presentation Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
5. Questions and Answers Part 1 Part 2

29-Jun-06 11:00 AM

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Life Sciences Luncheon with Australian of the Year Professor Ian Frazer