Associate Professor Annika Antonsson

Senior Research Officer

Cancer Control

About

Associate Professor Annika Antonsson is a virologist with epidemiological training. Viruses can cause cancer, and Annika’s research has been focused on human papillomavirus (HPV) and its role in different types of cancer. HPV is the virus that causes cervical cancer, for which a HPV vaccine (Gardasil®) was recently developed in Queensland.

Her current main research areas are oral HPV infections in the general population and HPV in mouth and throat cancer (mucosal squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck; HNSCC).

Some cancers of the mouth and throat are increasing and some of this increase is caused by HPV infection. HPV is a sexually transmitted infection and changing sexual behaviour is believed to have caused the increase in HPV-positive tumours of the mouth and throat. Annika is investigating how often HPV in found in HNSCCs and if there are any lifestyle factors linked with having HPV or not to have HPV in tumours.

It is not known how common the potentially cancer-causing viruses are in the mouth of the general population, and this is another area of research Annika is looking into. She has also worked on HPV in skin (normal skin and cancer), infections in breast carcinogenesis, HPV in oesophageal cancer and polyomaviruses in normal skin and skin cancer.

Current Appointments

Senior Research Officer, Cancer Control Group, QIMR Berghofer
Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Queensland

Previous Appointments

Senior Research Fellow, School of Medicine, University of Queensland
Senior Lecturer, University of New South Wales, Sydney (2015-2018)
Research Officer (2003-06) and Senior Research Officer (2007-2009), Molecular Virology Group, Diamantina Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane

Area of Interest

Research Highlights

Oral HPV infection in people vaccinated with Gardasil® and unvaccinated people. We will investigate if people who have been vaccinated against HPV have the same or different HPV types compared to unvaccinated people.

Natural history of oral HPV infection. We have been investigating how common oral HPV infection is in the general population in Australia, and if oral HPV infection is linked to lifestyle or sexual behaviours. We have also studied how often people get a new oral HPV infection (incidence) and how long oral HPV infections last for (persistence).

HPV, lifestyle and oropharyngeal (throat) cancer. We have been investigating differences in lifestyle factors and sexual behaviour in patients with HPV-positive and HPV-negative tumours. We have found high HPV prevalence (most commonly HPV-16), in younger individuals and in cancers of the tonsil. The proportion of tumours positive for HPV in oropharynx has increased dramatically over time. We have also linked sexual behaviour (more sexual partners, in particular oral sex partners) to HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancer.

miRNA and oropharyngeal cancer We investigated if miRNAs in oropharyngeal cancer can be used to predict HPV status, and if they can be used as a prognostic tool (recurrence and survival). We found seven miRNAs that were important for HPV status, three had potential to predict recurrence, and another three miRNAs could be used with clinical variables to predict survival.

Long-term stability of HPV antibodies. In the first study on longitudinal stability of antibodies to skin HPV, we found 86% of participants to be positive to antibodies to at least one of 37 skin HPV types studied. Over 90% stayed HPV antibody positive or negative during the 4.5-year follow-up. With this study, we proved that a single serum sample can be used as a marker of long-term antibody status.

HPV and oesophageal cancer. Very low prevalence of HPV detected in tumours, suggesting that HPV is not associated with oesophageal cancer (both cancer types squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma).

HPV and breast cancer. The viral role of breast cancer is still under debate. In our Australian breast cancer cohort we found HPV, but very low viral load. We found low prevalence of other DNA tumour viruses (ten polyomaviruses and two herpes viruses) in this dataset. We have not been able to identify a link between any virus and breast cancer.

HPV in normal skin. I was involved in developing a new revolutionary tool that detects the majority of HPV types, the FAP (Forslund-Antonsson-Primer). The FAP has, over the years isolated most known HPVs plus hundreds of new, previously unknown skin HPVs in both humans and animals. FAP has explosively expanded the phylogenetic papillomavirus tree. She has used the FAP in several publications to show the very high HPV prevalence and abundance of HPV types present in healthy skin in people of all ages across the globe.

Awards Recognition

NHMRC Career Development Fellowship
Garnett Passe Rodney Williams Memorial Foundation, Research Training Fellowship
NHMRC Peter Doherty fellowship. Declined in favour of the Mazda fellowship
Mazda/Prostate Cancer Foundation in Australia Research Fellowship
Swedish Society for Medical Research, Research Fellowship
The Swedish Research Council, Research Fellowship

Travel awards

Merck Sharp & Dohme (1)
Australian Infectious Disease Research Centre (AID) (2)
QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute (2)
The Seymour & Vivian Milstein Travel Award for Excellence in Interferon and Cytokine Research (1)
The Royal Physiographic Society, Sweden (3)
The Swedish Cancer Foundation (1)

Educational Background

GDip (Epidemiology), University of Queensland
PhD (Virology), Lund University, Sweden
MSc (Microbiology), Lund University, Sweden (one year at University College Cork, Ireland)

Professional Associations

Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre (AID) www.aidrc.org.au/annika-antonsson
International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology Consortium (INHANCE)
International Papillomavirus Society
The Global Virus Network (GVN)
Victorian Infection and Immunity Network (VIIN)