About the Authors

Rolando Herrero

herreror@iarc.fr

Affiliation Prevention and Implementation Group, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France

Wim Quint

Affiliation DDL Diagnostic Laboratory, Rijswijk, The Netherlands

Allan Hildesheim

Affiliation Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Paula Gonzalez

Affiliation Proyecto Epidemiológico Guanacaste, Fundación INCIENSA, Guanacaste, Costa Rica

Linda Struijk

Affiliation DDL Diagnostic Laboratory, Rijswijk, The Netherlands

Hormuzd A. Katki

Affiliation Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Carolina Porras

Affiliation Proyecto Epidemiológico Guanacaste, Fundación INCIENSA, Guanacaste, Costa Rica

Mark Schiffman

Affiliation Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Ana Cecilia Rodriguez

Affiliation Proyecto Epidemiológico Guanacaste, Fundación INCIENSA, Guanacaste, Costa Rica

Diane Solomon

Affiliation Division of Cancer Prevention, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Silvia Jimenez

Affiliation Proyecto Epidemiológico Guanacaste, Fundación INCIENSA, Guanacaste, Costa Rica

John T. Schiller

Affiliation Laboratory of Cellular Oncology, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Douglas R. Lowy

Affiliation Laboratory of Cellular Oncology, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Leen-Jan van Doorn

Affiliation DDL Diagnostic Laboratory, Rijswijk, The Netherlands

Sholom Wacholder

Affiliation Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Aimée R. Kreimer

Affiliation Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

for the CVT Vaccine Group

Membership of the CVT Vaccine Group is provided in the Acknowledgments

Competing Interests

JTS and DRL report that they are named inventors on US Government-owned HPV vaccine patents (US 5,437,951; US 5,709,996; US 5,716,620; US 5,744,142; US 5,756,284; US 5,871,998; US 5,985,610; US 7,220,419; and US 7,361,356: “Self-assembling recombinant papillomavirus capsid proteins”) that are licensed to GlaxoSmithKline and Merck and for which the National Cancer Institute receives licensing fees. They are entitled to limited royalties as specified by federal law. The following authors: Wim Quint, Leen-Jan van Doorn and Linda Struijk are employed by the commercial company DDL Diagnostic Laboratory, Rijswijk, The Netherlands. Vaccine was provided for our trial by GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals (GSK), under a Clinical Trials Agreement with the National Cancer Institute. GSK also provided support for aspects of the trial associated with regulatory submission needs of the company under FDA BB-IND 7920. The other authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: RH AH MS ACR DS JTS DRL SW. Performed the experiments: RH WQ AH PG LS HAK CP MS ACR SJ LJVD. Analyzed the data: RH AH PG HAK MS SW ARK. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: WQ HAK LJVD LS. Wrote the paper: RH AH ARK SW MS DS PG.