Oncogenic comparison of human papillomavirus type 58 E7 variants

Human papillomavirus 58 (HPV58) ranks the second or third in East Asian cervical cancers. Current studies on HPV58 are scarce and focus on the prototype. Previously, we identified the three most common circulating HPV58 E7 strains contained amino acid alterations: G41R/G63D (51%), T20I/G63S (22%) and T74A/D76E (14%) respectively. Among them, the T20I/G63S variant (V1) had a stronger epidemiological association with cervical cancer. We therefore suggested that V1 possessed stronger oncogenicity than the other two variants. Here, we performed phenotypic assays to characterize and compare their oncogenicities with HPV58 E7 prototype. Our results showed that overexpression of V1 conferred a higher colony‐forming ability to primary murine epithelial cells than prototype (P < 0.05) and other variants, implicating its higher immortalising potential. Further experiments showed that both V1 and prototype enhanced the anchorage‐independent growth of NIH/3T3 cells (P < 0.001), implicating their stronger transforming power than the two other variants. Moreover, they possessed an increased ability to degrade pRb (P < 0.001), which is a major effector pathway of E7‐driven oncogenesis. Our work represents the first study to compare the oncogenicities of HPV58 E7 prototype and variants. These findings deepened our understanding of HPV58 and might inform clinical screening and follow‐up strategy.