Abstract

The development of the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is one of the great public health accomplishments of the 21st century. The roots of this success can be traced back thousands of years. Ancient Greeks and Romans made the first tentative steps in this journey by identifying genital warts as a sexually transmitted disease [1]. It would not be until 1907, however, with the novel field of microbiology entering full swing that Ciuffo would confirm the infectious nature of genital warts [2]. Viral particles were confirmed as the infectious vector in the 1940s [3]. HPV was first described as a dsDNA virus in 1965 [4]. Following this description, the large phylogeny of HPV was rapidly expanded to today where over 175 genotypes have been identified [5] with the pace of discovery accelerating; it wasn’t long before the connection with cervical cancer was drawn.