A Magnetic Immunochromatographic Strip Test for Detection of Human Papillomavirus 16 E6

Cervical cancer kills 230 000 women annually. Low-resource regions of the world are disproportionately burdened with 80% of the cases. Efficient screening methods are the key to decreasing the death toll from this disease. High-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) types have been identified as the etiological agent for >99% of cervical cancers. Infection with HPV is ubiquitous and is often resolved by the host. High-risk HPV infections leading to cervical cancer require the production of both HPV E6 and E7 oncoproteins (1)(2)(3)(4)(5). Thus, an assay capable of detecting high-risk HPV E6 from cervical swab samples may have a high positive predictive value and may help to accurately identify women at increased risk of progression to cancer. Internal studies have shown that cervical cancer cell lines produce ∼1 ng of E6 per 1 000 000 cells (data not shown). Work is continuing to quantify E6 amounts in cervical cell samples from clients with cancer, high-grade lesions (cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 2/3), and low-grade lesions (cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 1). Protein determinations performed on provider-collected cervical swabs indicate that the swabs collect 500 000 …