Antibodies against linear and conformational epitopes of the human papillomavirus (HPV) type 16 E6 and E7 oncoproteins in sera of cervical cancer patients.

Sera obtained from 137 cervical cancer patients were analysed for the presence of antibodies to the human papillomavirus (HPV) type 16 proteins E6 and E7 by the aid of different assays, i.e. ELISA using as antigen either synthetic peptides or the complete E7 protein and radio-immunoprecipitation (RIPA) which uses the viral protein made by in vitro transcription/translation. In agreement with previous reports, reactivity to the E7 protein was found more frequently than to the E6 protein (31.4% vs. 16.8%) when the sera were assayed by peptide-based ELISA. In contrast, when RIPA was employed, reactivity to either protein was obtained at similar frequency (38.7% vs 46.7%). When the protein was denatured prior to immuno-precipitation the reactivity was lost in all sera tested for E6-specific antibodies but only in a few samples in the E7-RIPA. Therefore it was concluded that the increased sensitivity of the E6-RIPA as compared to the E6 peptide-ELISA is due to the detection of antibodies to conformational epitopes which are presented by the in vitro product but not by the synthetic peptides. Eighty-two sera from healthy donors were tested by HPV 16E6- and E7-RIPA and also by ELISA using the HPV 16E7 protein which was produced in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. One sample reacted each in the E6- and E7-RIPA indicating a high specificity of these assays. The E7 protein-ELISA proved to be less sensitive for the detection of antibodies in cervical cancer patients' sera (22.6% positive) as compared to peptide-based ELISA or RIPA.