Persistent infection with oncogenic human papillomavirus (HPV) is a prerequisite for cervical disease development, yet data regarding the host immune response to infection at the genotype level are quite limited. We created pseudoviruses bearing the major (L1) and minor (L2) capsid proteins and L1 virus-like particles representing the reference sequence and a consensus of 34 European sequences of HPV51. Despite the formation of similarly sized particles, motifs in the reference L1 and L2 genes had a profound impact on the immunogenicity, antigenicity and infectivity of these antigens. The antibody status of women exhibiting low-grade disease was similar between HPV16 and the consensus HPV51, but both demonstrated discrepancies between binding and neutralizing antibody responses. These data support the use of pseudoviruses as the preferred target antigen in studies of natural HPV infection and the need to consider variation in both the L1 and L2 proteins for the appropriate presentation of antibody epitopes.
Received 5 November 2014 Accepted 12 March 2015Persistent infection with one or more of about a dozen human papillomavirus (HPV) genotypes (Bouvard et al., 2009) is associated with the development of cervical cancer, a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in women worldwide (Schiffman et al., 2007). The propensity for certain genotypes to persist longer than others (Rositch et al., 2013) may contribute to the observed HPV genotype distribution differences between low-grade disease and cervical cancer (Guan et al., 2012).The non-enveloped capsid of HPV comprises the major (L1) and minor (L2) capsid proteins. The L1 protein facilitates virus attachment to host cells, whilst the L2 protein is essential for subsequent virus infectivity (Buck et al., 2013;Raff et al., 2013;Wang & Roden, 2013).Current L1 virus-like particle (VLP)-based HPV vaccines target the most prevalent genotypes, HPV16 and HPV18, and elicit type-specific neutralizing antibodies thought to confer the high levels of efficacy observed in clinical trials (Lehtinen & Dillner, 2013;Schiller et al., 2012). A limited number of serological assays are available for measuring vaccine type-specific antibody responses, including an L1 VLP ELISA, a mAb competitive VLP assay and an L1L2 pseudovirus neutralization assay. Despite some discrepancies, overall inter-assay agreements are good (Dessy et al., 2008;Krajden et al., 2014). Natural infection (NI) studies usually compare the HPV DNA status of individuals with their respective antibody status in order to better understand the pathogen-host relationship. Most of these studies have examined HPV16 and/or HPV18 (Castellsagué et al., 2014;Lin et al., 2013;Pastrana et al., 2004; Safaeian et al., 2010;Xi et al., 2002), whilst some have expanded their investigations to evaluate other genotypes including HPV6, HPV11, HPV31, HPV33, HPV35, HPV45, HPV52 and HPV58 (Carter et al., 2000;Ochi et al., 2008; Syrjänen et al., 2009;Wilson et al., 2013). Most of these studies have made use of an immobilized L1-based t...