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Humant papillomvirus som orsakar livmoderhalscancer – Forskargrupp Karin Sundström

Vi studerar humant papillomvirus (HPV) som orsakar cervixcancer (livmoderhalscancer). Forskningen fokuserar på hela kedjan från godartade HPV-infektioner, risken för cellförändringar i cervix, till prognosstudier för kvinnor med invasiv cervixcancer.

Sundström Group, från vänster: Adina L. Feldman, Karin Sundström, Jiangrong Wang and Qingyun Yao.

Human papillomavirus and risk of cancer

HPV is a small double-stranded DNA-virus which can cause condyloma (external genital warts), cervical precancerous lesions, and invasive cervical cancer. HPV is sexually transmitted in the majority of cases, and is very common in sexual contacts. Most often, the infection will clear on its own, but in a minority of cases the viral infection will persist for a long time in the mucosa, and can then cause cervical precancerous lesions and ultimately cancer. The cancer development, however, requires time and several steps of development to take place, which means we have room to intervene at several points in time. Therefore, most high-resource settings in the world have introduced cervical screening, where samples are taken from a woman’s cervix and precancer can be detected and cured early, before true cancer develops.

The fact remains that screening can always be improved, and that the participation of women needs to be continuously evaluated. Therefore, we work both with the development of new biomarkers for screening, and studies of participation/engagement in health practices.

HPV-vaccination

Since the year 2006-2007, we have access to effective HPV-vaccines which protect against vaccine-HPV-type related HPV infection, condyloma, and cervical precancerous lesions. We recently showed from ̽»¨¾«Ñ¡ that HPV-vaccination also prevents true invasive cervical cancer on the population-level, as predicted by clinical trials. A particular interest of mine is to perform long-term follow-up studies of HPV vaccination using the Swedish register infrastructure, to evaluate comprehensively and continuously the HPV vaccines effectiveness over time.

HPV-test and prognosis for survival

In collaboration with the Department for Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (MEB), we perform research to understand the potential of HPV-testing to serve as a prognostic indicator/determinant in cervical cancer.

Publikationer

Utvalda publikationer

  • Article: NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE. 2020;383(14):1340-1348
    Lei J; Ploner A; Elfstrom KM; Wang J; Roth A; Fang F; Sundstrom K; Dillner J; Sparen P
  • Article: CANCER RESEARCH. 2019;79(17):4532-4538
    Arroyo-Muhr L-S; Lagheden C; Hultin E; Eklund C; Adami H-O; Dillner J; Sundstrom K
  • Article: PREVENTIVE MEDICINE. 2019;120:26-33
    Wang J; Ploner A; Sparen P; Lepp T; Roth A; Arnheim-Dahlstrom L; Sundstrom K
  • Article: PLOS MEDICINE. 2018;15(10):e1002666
    Lei J; Ploner A; Lagheden C; Eklund C; Kleppe SN; Andrae B; Elfstrom KM; Dillner J; Sparen P; Sundstrom K
  • Article: BRITISH JOURNAL OF CANCER. 2018;119(9):1163-1168
    Arroyo-Muhr LS; Lagheden C; Hultin E; Eklund C; Adami H-O; Dillner J; Sundstrom K

Finansiering

Biomarkers and screening: The Swedish Society of Medicine, Center for Innovative Medicine (CIMED)/Region Stockholm. HPV-vaccination: academic projects, collaborative projects and commissioned research funded by Merck and Co., Inc.

Research techniques

  • Epidemiology, biostatistics with a focus on register-based and biobank-based applications.
  • HPV-testing and deep sequencing/NGS in collaboration with group Joakim Dillner and the Center for Cervical Cancer Prevention at Karolinska University Hospital.

Teaching assignments

We teach within a number of KI programmes:

  • The Master Programme in Diagnostic Cytology
  • The Bachelor’s Programme in Biomedicine
  • The Study Programme in Specialist Nursing
  • PhD-traning courses in epidemiology
Nyckelord:
Cancer och onkologi Epidemiologi Folkhälsovetenskap, global hälsa och socialmedicin Förebyggande medicin Gynekologi, obstetrik och reproduktionsmedicin Humant papillomvirus ³¢¾±±¹³¾´Ç»å±ð°ù³ó²¹±ô²õ³Ù³Ü³¾Ã¶°ù±ð°ù Visa alla
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Ã…sa Catapano
2025-06-03