QUEST – ADVANCE

QUEST – ADVANCE

The QUEST-ADVANCE Study will evaluate the long-term protection of the HPV vaccine in women and men. Close to 6000 people will take part.

What is HPV?

HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the world with about 80% of sexually active females and males being infected in their lifetime. Most of these infections clear on their own but in 10% of these people, repeat infections occur and may ultimately lead to a variety of cancers including cervical, vaginal, vulvar, penile, anal, tonsil and tongue cancer. HPV can also cause genital warts and wart-like growths or tumor on the voice box.

The World Health Organization has declared the elimination of cervical cancer as a top health priority. Canada may be one of the first countries to eliminate cervical cancer by improving the HPV vaccine program, seeing how long protection from the vaccine lasts, and needing fewer doses to ideally achieve lifelong protection.

There are three HPV vaccines licensed in Canada and all three were originally provided in a 3-dose schedule. Based on Canadian research showing that 2 doses of the vaccine are just as good as 3 in adolescents under 15 years of age, global recommendations for this age group were reduced to 2 vaccines instead of 3. Since several Canadian provinces changed to a 2-dose schedule, long-term protection of this reduced dose schedule can be examined in BC.

Study information

Why are we doing the study?

The research project described here is part of the ACE-Canada research program (Acceleration of Cervical Cancer Elimination) and focuses on long-term immunogenicity and effectiveness of the HPV vaccine, with a special interest in reduced dosing schedules.

This study is trying to determine:

• What is the best HPV vaccine dosing schedule?
• How long does protection from the HPV vaccine last?

Who can participate?

This study includes those who previously received 1, 2, 3, or 0 HPV vaccines. Females (assigned female at birth) aged 13-27 and males (assigned male at birth) aged 15-20 may take part. Please note that you don’t need to receive any vaccines for this study. If preferred, those who received 0-1 doses of HPV vaccine may be eligible to complete the vaccine dosage series.

What does the study involve?

You can participate entirely by yourself at home. It will take about 1-2 hours total over 2-4 years (depending on study group) and will involve:

• 2-4 short (5-10 minute) online health surveys that are emailed to you
• 2-4 self-collected genital swabs done by yourself in your home that are mailed to you
• 1-3 optional blood draws (max. 30-40 mL each) and self-collected tampon samples (females only) at our study clinic in Vancouver, BC. You can choose whether or not you want to do the optional sub-study.

We hope that you will consider joining this study and the impact it will have on not only Canadians but both women and men worldwide.

The following videos are intended for male (assigned male at birth) study participants and show:

     1.  Instructions for the non-invasive genital swab for male (assigned male at birth) participants.
 

     
     2.  Background on HPV, and how participating in this study can help reduce cancer rates.
 

How do I sign up for this study?

If you are interested in helping reach our goal of eliminating cervical cancer in Canada, please call us at 604-875-2636 (toll-free 1-866-502-2424) or email us (questadvance@bcchr.ubc.ca).

Participate