A study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that HPV testing significantly reduces deaths from cervical cancer, compared to other methods including Pap testing.
The trial used Qiagen's digene HPV test, which detects high-risk types of human papillomavirus that cause cervical cancer.
'The implications of the findings of this trial are immediate and global: international experts in cervical-cancer prevention should now adapt HPV testing for widespread implementation,' wrote Mark Schiffman and Sholom Wacholder.
Following this milestone study, over the next five years Qiagen will donate one million HPV tests as part of its broader global access programme to provide quality cervical cancer screening technologies to women in developing countries.
Nearly 300,000 women die of cervical cancer every year, with 80 per cent of deaths occurring in developing countries.
Qiagen's commitment to expanded access to HPV screening includes: HPV test donation programs; development of HPV technologies; and tiered-pricing initiatives for low-resource countries.
'This study further validates the value of Qiagen's HPV test as the gold standard for cervical cancer screening and demonstrates that the incidence of advanced cervical cancer and deaths are actually reduced when HPV screening is implemented,' said Peer Schatz, chief executive of Qiagen.
Moving forward, Qiagen will collaborate with a team of global health partners - including the International Planned Parenthood Federation and Jhpiego, an international non-profit health organisation affiliated with Johns Hopkins University - on the administration of the donation programme.
Led by Dr Rengaswamy Sankaranarayanan of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the randomised controlled trial compared the efficacy of three methods of cervical cancer screening: VIA, Pap testing (cytology) and HPV testing with Qiagen's hybrid capture 2 (hc2) DNA testing technology (the digene HPV Test).
The study was conducted in the Maharashtra state of India, and was supported with funding by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The randomised controlled trial measured incidence of cervical cancer and associated rates of death as the primary outcomes, using different tools for screening.
In addition to being 'associated with a significant reduction in the numbers of advanced cervical cancers and deaths from cervical cancer', Qiagen's HC2 HPV testing platform 'was the most objective and reproducible of all cervical cancer screening tests and was less demanding in terms of training and quality assurance', stated the authors of the study.
To ensure that HPV testing can reach women in all regions of the world, Qiagen is working with Path and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a new version of its HPV test - the CareHPV test - for public-health programmes in low-resource, developing countries.
The CareHPV test, currently in development, can be performed without electricity or running water and offers HPV detection results in a matter of hours - a critical characteristic for women travelling to clinics from isolated villages and for those women who may need to be treated the same day.
Both Qiagen HPV screening technologies - CareHPV and the digene HPV Test - are expected to play a key role in reducing cervical cancer worldwide.
