Genotyping of human papillomavirus in cervical lesions by L1 consensus PCR and the Luminex xMAP system.

Infection with human papillomavirus (HPV) is the main cause of cervical cancer, the principal cancer in women in most developing countries. Molecular epidemiologic evidence clearly indicates that certain types of HPV are the principal cause of invasive cervical cancer and cervical intraepithelial neoplasia. Comprehensive, high-throughput typing assays for HPV, however, are not currently available. By combining L1 consensus PCR and multiplex hybridization using a Luminex xMAP system-based suspension array, the authors developed a rapid high-throughput assay, the HPV DNA suspension array (HPV-SA), capable of simultaneously typing 26 HPVs, including 18 high-risk HPV genotypes and eight low-risk HPV genotypes. The performance of the HPV-SA applied to 26 synthetic oligonucleotide targets was evaluated. The HPV-SA system perfectly discriminated 18 high-risk HPV targets from eight low-risk HPV targets. To assess the clinical applicability of the assay, the HPV-SA was performed with 133 MY09/MY11 primer set-mediated PCR (MY-PCR)-positive clinical specimens; of the 133 samples, 121 were positive by HPV-SA. Both single and multiple types were easily identified. The authors believe that improvement of the assay may be useful for epidemiological studies, cancer-screening programmes, the monitoring of therapeutic interventions, and the evaluation of the efficacy of HPV vaccine trials.