The inventor of the HPV vaccine, Ian Frazer, will team up with a local Shenzhen company to begin clinical trials on a new form of the vaccine, according to the Shenzhen government's official website.
According to a government press release, Frazer will sign an agreement with Shenzhen Dehui International Holdings this year, which will allow the immunologist and his team to begin clinical trials on a new treatment for HPV at the city's International Institute of Translational Medicine.
Frazer’s ‘Gardasil 9’ is now the standard used by hospitals all over the world to protect people from the potentially cancer-causing virus.
Image via Wikimedia
A Scottish-born Australian, Frazer is the current holder of a crucial patent for the vaccine under US law. His partner in researching the virus, Jian Zhou from Hangzhou, Zhejiang, died in 1999.
Together they created Cervarix and Gardasil, vaccines which first showed resistance to HPV and which form the basis of current HPV vaccinations.
Gardasil 9, a form of the vaccine that protects against nine harmful types of HPV, was introduced on the Chinese mainland in August of this year. Previously, only the quadrivalent vaccine, which protects against four types of HPV, was available.
In Shenzhen, the first available round of the Gardasil 9 vaccination totaled 1,060 innoculations, all of which were booked on the first day of availability.
China is one of the largest emerging markets for HPV vaccines in the world, and news of a scarcity of requisite care have been rife.
An article published by the Financial Times in June of this year spoke about how migrating Chinese medical tourists had caused a shortage, as well as a spike in price, of the Gardasil 9 vaccine in Hong Kong. Chinese people seeking the nine variant form have also been known to travel to Malaysia and Singapore, spending vast amounts of money on travel expenses.
China, which only recently approved any form of the HPV vaccine, is racing against time to develop enough Gardasil 9 to provide for the country’s massive population. According to the Financial Times, around 26 million Chinese women are expected to seek inoculation from the virus in the next few years.
China first approved a two variant vaccination, protecting against HPV16 and HPV18 in mid 2016. HPV16 and HPV18 are considered the most deadly forms of the virus, causing 70 percent of HPV-induced cervical cancers and pre cancerous cervical lesions, according to the World Health Organisation.
[Cover image via Pixabay]
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