Every year tens of thousands of women across Australia are told they have high-risk HPV – the type of the virus most likely to lead to cervical cancer.
And then they are told there is nothing to treat it.
That is not a gap in awareness. It is a gap in medicine. It is also, strangely, one that rarely gets named.
Clinibase, recently completed recruitment for an early-stage clinical trial now underway in Australia, testing a vaginal insert designed to treat high-risk HPV directly, something that has never existed before.
It is the kind of work that speaks to the growing confidence of Australia’s startup ecosystem, backing solutions to problems that have long been overlooked.
It is still early. We do not yet know if it will work. But the fact that it is being tested at all says something important about where women’s health research is heading.
Get the best of Startup Daily straight to your inbox
Want to know the latest in startup news? Subscribe to our daily news and analysis coverage on what’s happening to ANZ startups, investors and the broader ecosystem. And best of all, it’s FREE!
By continuing, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.
Why it matters
The women who have chosen to participate in this trial know exactly what is at stake. Many of them have already been through the cycle that a positive HPV result sets in motion: the monitoring, the repeat colposcopies, the anxiety of waiting to find out whether the virus has progressed.
They are not there out of curiosity. They are there because they want something better, and because nothing better currently exists.
I think about that a lot. It is easy to talk about this work in abstract terms. But behind every trial are people who have run out of options and are willing to try something new.
That is what makes this work meaningful, and that is what Australia’s clinical research community needs to keep at the centre of everything it does.
Australia has extraordinary credentials in this space. Ian Frazer and Jian Zhou developed Gardasil here.
Australia was the first country to roll out a national HPV vaccination program, and is on track to be the first in the world to eliminate cervical cancer by 2035.
A free vaccine
What many people do not know is that the HPV vaccine is available for free in Australia for anyone up to the age of 26 – protecting against multiple strains of the virus that cause not only cervical cancer but a range of other cancers and sexually transmitted infections. That legacy is genuinely world-leading. But it also creates a responsibility to keep going, to ask what comes next, to build on what was started.
The treatment side of HPV is one answer to that question. The vaccine prevents infection and it has been transformative. In 2021, one in nine Australians who underwent routine cervical screening tested positive for high-risk HPV. For every one of them, there was no treatment to offer.
The Australian Government has put women’s health at the centre of its policy agenda, expanding access to medicines, opening new endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics, and bringing menopause care into Medicare for the first time.
That is meaningful, but policy alone does not close treatment gaps. Research does.
Clinical trials
Clinical trials are how new medicines move from hypothesis to prescription. Building the infrastructure to run them well: recruiting the right participants, supporting research sites, and working with international sponsors to bring trials to Australia is a critical part of that process.
We are at an early stage of what could become a genuinely significant moment for Australian women’s health research. This trial is the kind of work that, if it succeeds, changes what is possible for millions of women, here and everywhere.
For Australian women’s health research, this is the next chapter. It should be written here.
