Viral Protection: Achieving the Possible. The elimination of HPV cancers in Europe

Alessandra Moretti MEP is a Member of the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee. After a law degree and some years in the Regional Council and the National Parliament, in 2019 Alessandra Moretti was elected member of the European Parliament where she is member of ENVI (Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee), TRAN (Transport and Tourism Committee) and FEMM (Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee). Alessandra is committed in her fight against inequality and social fractures and to address the challenges of our time: climate change, gender equality and social justice.

Dr Andrea Ammon, MD, MPH, was appointed Director of European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in June 2017. From April 2011 to April 2015, Andrea Ammon was Deputy to the Director and Head of Unit for Resource Management and Coordination. From May 2015, she was ECDC’s Acting Director. Andrea joined ECDC as the Head of the Surveillance Unit in 2005. The unit was responsible for developing The European Surveillance System (TESSy), implementing a long-term surveillance strategy for the European Union (EU), evaluating the Dedicated Surveillance Networks (DSN), performing step-by-step transfer of DSN activities to ECDC, revising the EU case definitions and producing an Annual Epidemiological Report on infectious diseases in the EU. Prior to joining the ECDC, Dr Ammon served in several roles at the Robert Koch-Institute, in Berlin, Germany, most recently as Head of Department for Infectious Disease Epidemiology. In this capacity, she maintained and further developed the German national surveillance system; coordinated the national outbreak response team for current and emerging infections; coordinated emergency planning for influenza; directed the national Field Epidemiology Training Programme; coordinated epidemiological research programmes in infectious diseases and provided scientific advice for government Ministries, Members of Parliament, and the public.

Cobi Reisman is Past-President, European Society of Sexual Medicine, Urologist, sexologist, lecturer, honorary professor, and currently medical director of Flare-Health institute in Amstelveen, senior lecturer of Clinical Sexology at the postgraduate institute RINO-Amsterdam and co-director of the European Society for Sexual Medicine (ESSM) School of Sexual Medicine. He has more than 20 years of clinical experience focusing on sexual dysfunctions in males and females. In 1998 received his PhD thesis on diagnostic tools and objective medical decisions. He was past-president of the ESSM, co-founder and past-president of the multidisciplinary joint committee of sexual medicine of the UEMS, for which he received Silver Decoration of Honour. He is honorary and visiting Professor for urology of the Russian Federal Institute of Urology, Moscow and of the Shanghai Institute of Andrology of the Medical School of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He is co-editors of several books a.o. Cancer, Intimacy and Sexuality (Springer). Authors of more than 20 book chapters and co-author of more than 70 peer-reviewed articles.

Emilie Karafillakis is the European research lead at the Vaccine Confidence Project™, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK. With a background in public health, infectious disease control, and health systems and policies research, she has more than 5 years of experience researching vaccine and health intervention confidence. As a social scientist, her work focuses on understanding individual and group beliefs, attitudes and confidence in health interventions and assess how these can influence public health control measures and health promotion strategies, including vaccination. She is also involved in managing digital and social media analytical research projects to detect and mitigate misinformation and rumours circulating around vaccination and vaccine trials around the world.

Margaret Stanley is Emeritus Professor of Epithelial Biology in the University of Cambridge and Honorary Fellow of Christs College, Cambridge. She attended the Universities of London, Bristol and Adelaide, she is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Honorary Fellow of the UK Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. She has a lifetime award for contribution to research on cervical cancer and cervical precancers from the American Society for Colposcopy and Cytopathology (ASCCP) and a lifetime award for achievement from the International Papillomavirus Society. She has served on several UK Research Council committees and was a member of the Biology and Biotechnology Science Research Council from 2000-2003. She was a member of the Spongiform Encephalopathies Advisory Committee that advised the UK government on prion diseases (mad cow disease) from 2004-2010. In 2004 she was awarded the OBE for services to Virology. She was and still is a research scientist and her research has focussed on how the body defends itself against infections with HPV (human papillomavirus) the cause of cervical cancer in women, how to develop vaccines that prevent HPV infection as well as those that might treat HPV infection. She is a consultant for the 3 companies that market HPV vaccines, MSD, SPMSD and GSK and for small biotech companies developing therapeutic vaccines. She acts as the invited HPV expert for the HPV subcommittee of the Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation in the UK.

Tristan Almada is Co-Founder, HPV and Anal Cancer Foundation and the Noman is an Island: Race to End HPV Campaign. He lost his mother Paulette in 2010 to Stage IV HPV-related anal cancer. Weeks later, he co-founded the HPV and Anal Cancer Foundation, and the NOMAN is an Island: Race to End HPV campaign with his two sisters. Tristan believes HPV – the causal agent of 5% of all cancers – can be completely eradicated within our lifetime, similar to other infectious diseases controlled by universal vaccination, such as polio and smallpox. Tristan lives in Geneva where he works full-time at an international trading company. He received a Physics degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007. Tristan competes in multi-day endurance events to raise awareness about HPV and its connection to male cancer