Evaluation of the Clinical Performance of the HPV-Risk Assay Using the VALGENT-3 Panel

Human papillomavirus (HPV) testing is increasingly being incorporated into cervical cancer screening. The Validation of HPV Genotyping Tests (VALGENT) is a framework designed to evaluate the clinical performance of various HPV tests relative to that of the validated and accepted comparator test in a formalized and uniform manner. The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical performance of the HPV-Risk assay with samples from the VALGENT-3 panel and to compare its performance to that of the clinically validated Hybrid Capture 2 assay (HC2). The VALGENT-3 panel comprises 1,300 consecutive samples from women participating in routine cervical cancer screening and is enriched with 300 samples from women with abnormal cytology. DNA was extracted from original ThinPrep PreservCyt medium aliquots, and HPV testing was performed using the HPV-Risk assay by investigators blind to the clinical data. HPV prevalence was analyzed, and the clinical performance of the HPV-Risk assay for the detection of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 3 or worse (CIN3+) and CIN2 or worse (CIN2+) relative to the performance of HC2 was assessed. The sensitivity of the HPV-Risk assay for the detection of CIN3+ was similar to that of HC2 (relative sensitivity, 1.00; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.95 to 1.05; P = 1.000), but the specificity of the HPV-Risk assay was significantly higher than that of HC2 (relative specificity, 1.02; 95% CI, 1.01 to 1.04; P < 0.001). For the detection of CIN2+, similar results were obtained, with the relative sensitivity being 0.98 (95% CI, 0.93 to 1.02; P = 0.257) and the relative specificity being 1.02 (95% CI, 1.01 to 1.03; P < 0.001). The performance of the HPV-Risk assay for the detection of CIN3+ and CIN2+ was noninferior to that of HC2, with all P values being ≤0.006. In conclusion, the HPV-Risk assay demonstrated noninferiority to the clinically validated HC2 by the use of samples from the VALGENT-3 panel for test validation and comparison.