About the Authors

Bettina Huber

Affiliation Department of Dermatology, Division of Immunology, Allergy and Infectious Diseases (DIAID), Laboratory of Viral Oncology (LVO), Medical University Vienna (MUW), Vienna, Austria

Christina Schellenbacher

Affiliation Department of Dermatology, Division of Immunology, Allergy and Infectious Diseases (DIAID), Laboratory of Viral Oncology (LVO), Medical University Vienna (MUW), Vienna, Austria

Christoph Jindra

Affiliation Department of Dermatology, Division of Immunology, Allergy and Infectious Diseases (DIAID), Laboratory of Viral Oncology (LVO), Medical University Vienna (MUW), Vienna, Austria

Dieter Fink

Affiliation Institute of Laboratory Animal Science, Department of Biomedical Science, Veterinary University Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Saeed Shafti-Keramat

Affiliation Department of Dermatology, Division of Immunology, Allergy and Infectious Diseases (DIAID), Laboratory of Viral Oncology (LVO), Medical University Vienna (MUW), Vienna, Austria

Reinhard Kirnbauer

reinhard.kirnbauer@meduniwien.ac.at

Affiliation Department of Dermatology, Division of Immunology, Allergy and Infectious Diseases (DIAID), Laboratory of Viral Oncology (LVO), Medical University Vienna (MUW), Vienna, Austria

Competing Interests

Reinhard Kirnbauer is a co-inventor on 6 patents on Papillomavirus-like Particles (VLP) vaccine technology. Title: Self-assembling recombinant HPV16 papillomavirus capsid proteins. US Patent No. 5,985,610 (Issued Nov 16, 1999), US Patent No. 5,871,998 (Issued Feb 16, 1999), US Patent No. 5,744,142 (Issued April 28, 1998), US Patent No. 5,756,284 (Issued May 26, 1998), US Patent No. 5,716,620 (Issued Feb 10, 1998), and US Patent No. 5,709,996 (Issued Jan 20, 1998). The RG1-VLP technology is subject to a pending patent application‚ Broad-spectrum human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine (Reinhard Kirnbauer, Christina Schellenbacher (Medical University Vienna), and Richard Roden, (Johns Hopkins University)). The other authors state no conflict of interest. On behalf of all authors, Reinhard Kirnbauer declares that this does not alter the authors’ adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: BH CS DF RK. Performed the experiments: BH CS CJ SSK. Analyzed the data: BH CS CJ SSK RK. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: BH CS CJ DF SSK RK. Wrote the paper: BH CS RK.