Dear Colleagues,

We are soliciting articles for a Special Issue of the MDPI journal Vaccines, entitled “Feature Paper of Vaccines and Women's Health”.

Persistent infection with a high-risk human papillo­mavirus (HPV) genotypes is necessary for the develop­ment of cervical cancer. More than 15 years have elapsed since HPV vaccination was implemented and more than 100 countries have introduced HPV vaccination programs.

Although the HPV vaccines currently available have been shown in trial settings to have nearly 100% clinical efficacy against cervical disease caused by vaccine-specific high-risk HPV genotypes, cervical cancer is still the fourth most frequent cancer in women worldwide, with an estimated >600,000 cases diagnosed each year and >300,000 cervical-cancer-related deaths occurring in 2020.

We know that HPV vaccines are immunogenic and safe, and that efficacy data from clinical trials suggest that vaccination strongly protects against both persistent HPV infection and cervical precancerous lesions.

The clinical knowledge about HPV vaccination is growing year after year: we have moved from primary prevention in girls, opening to gender neutral vaccination, and reaching new scenarios such as adult women vaccination. Clinicians and epidemiologists imagine a world of new perspectives with HPV eradication, but we have to face the truth: despite the benefits of reducing HPV diseases that vaccines offer, in too many countries the coverage in girls and boys is still very far from the 95% coverage target.

Future studies about HPV vaccination are needed to evaluate clinical protection against disease recurrence in treated patients for all HPV-related diseases, with comprehensive postvaccination surveillance evaluating the reduction of recurrence risk.

Long-term surveillance data of vaccinated populations is needed to determine the clinical effectiveness of vaccination, the herd immunity effect, the clear evidence for no-type replacement, the long-term safety, and the psychological impact of vaccination in patients treated with HPV-related diseases. Many issues remain to be addressed; most importantly, trials are necessary to evaluate a better knowledge of the immune system response, pathways and mechanism of progression of HPV diseases, viral latency/reactivation, and the possible impact of the HPV vaccine with these concerns.

Three prophylactic vaccines against HPV infection are available and have been shown to prevent persistent HPV infection and precancerous cervical abnormalities, while therapeutic vaccines are not yet commercially available. Our call is addressed to papers covering any and all of these issues, focusing primarily on HPV vaccination from both clinical and basic research points of view.

Dr. Alessandro Ghelardi
Prof. Dr. Tommaso Simoncini
Dr. Andrea Ciavattini
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Vaccines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.