Papillomavirus: Viral vectors in the gene therapy and new therapeutic targets

Abstract

Epitheliotropic and mucosotropic Papillomaviruses (PVs) constitute the Papillomaviridae family. There are 26 genera comprising levels of inter species genetic similarities by nucleotide sequence analysis of the L1 viral region, the generally most conserved region among papillomaviruses. There is an increasing consensus that the ideal vector for gene therapy should be completely based on chromosomal elements and behave as an independent functional unit after integration. The present paper is a short review about epidemiology of HPV infection, vaccines anti-HPV and tumors associated with HPV and gene therapy including biological vectors, stem cells, viral and non-viral vectors and chromosome-based vectors. Furthermore, new therapeutic targets and vectors applied in gene therapy of other viruses are some of the examples that have been successfully modified by recombinant DNA techniques. New biotechnologies in molecular biology have been applied in papillomavirus research and are still being investigated for the application in the gene therapy. RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) for analysis of the transcriptome, multiply-primed rolling circle amplification (RCA) used to identify novel human papillomaviruses (HPV) and new DNA sequencing method based on real-time phyrophosphate are examples as new techniques.