"It is gratifying to be part of the transformation of scientific breakthrough into actual benefits for people's health," says Didier Hoch, President of Sanofi Pasteur MSD. "Only 30 years after the discovery that HPV can cause cervical cancer and many other diseases we hold today a vaccine in our hands that can save lives and prevent the suffering of thousands and millions of women. This is unprecedented progress in medical and pharmaceutical research."
From 2006 to 2008, Gardasil® has won national Galien Prizes in Belgium, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, UK, and US. Additionally, Gardasil® has garnered a number of other prizes, including the 2006 Scrip Award by the British pharmaceutical newsletter Scrip for "Best new biological product" and 2007 Medec Prize by the French general practitioners for "Medicine of the year".
During the 1970s, Professor Harald zur Hausen, the Co-Laureate of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, postulated the role of HPV in causing cervical cancer. He pursued this idea for more than 10 years by searching for different HPV types, which culminated in the discovery in 1983 of HPV 16 as a cause of cervical cancer. In 1984, Harald zur Hausen succeeded in isolating (cloning) HPV16 and 18 from patients with cervical cancer.1 Today, it is known that HPV types 6, 11, 16 and 18 cause the vast majority of HPV-related genital diseases.
The development of Gardasil® started in the early 1990s. Today, two years after the first approval in 2006, it is approved in 107 countries and widely implemented with 36 million doses distributed worldwide* and 90% global market share. † These figures reflect the strong endorsement by experts, regulators, health authorities, physicians, parents and daughters. Gardasil® is the only four-type (6,11,16,18) human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. In addition to strong and sustained cervical cancer protection, Gardasil® protects from cervical, vulvar and vaginal pre-cancer, and from genital warts caused by HPV types 6, 11, 16 and 18. These four types together cause the vast majority of HPV-related genital diseases.
HPV vaccination is now recommended in 18 of the 19 European countries in which Sanofi Pasteur MSD markets Gardasil®, and is funded or due to be funded soon in 17 of them‡. The vaccine is also recommended and funded in the US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
$ By the end of September 2008
† In value. Implied from public financial disclosures by Merck & Co. Inc. and GSK; third quarter 2008: 89.5%, cumulative (year to date): 92.7%.
‡ Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom; only Finland has not yet recommended HPV vaccination; only Austria and Finland have not yet decided on funding.
