Qiagen has announced that its human papillomavirus (HPV) testing technologies are a successful commercialisation of the Nobel Prize in Medicine winner's research.
The Nobel Prize Committee has announced that Prof Harald zur Hausen at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg will receive this year's Nobel Prize in Medicine/Physiology for the discovery of certain HPVs as the primary cause of cervical cancer.
Expanding on zur Hausen's research, Qiagen developed and markets the Digene HPV test, a screening test to detect the high-risk types of the HPV virus that cause cervical cancer.
The company is also developing CareHPV, a new HPV test specifically for use in regions of the world with scarce resources.
The Nobel Prize winner's discovery that the HPV causes cervical cancer ushered in a new field of cancer-focused HPV genetics research.
The identification of the causal role of the HPV virus in cervical cancer spurred research teams to identify the high-risk types of HPV most commonly linked to cervical cancer, then create molecular diagnostic tests to identify the presence of these high-risk types in cervical cells.
Qiagen claimed its Digene HPV test is becoming a standard of care for cervical cancer prevention for use together with a Pap test in women age 30 and older, and the cervical cancer vaccine is helping protect populations of young girls from ever contracting two of the most prevalent strains of high-risk HPV.
The Digene HPV test and the CareHPV test, currently in development, are screening tools that identify women most likely to have or develop cervical cancer by detecting the presence of the high-risk types of HPV that cause the disease.
The Digene HPV Test is Food and Drug Administration-approved and CE marked, for use together with the Pap test in women 30 and older.