Reinhard Kirnbauer is the chief of the Laboratory of Viral Oncology and a Professor at the Department of Dermatology in Vienna. He has a strong interest in translational research and in the pathobiology of papillomaviruses. He is recognized for over 30 years of pioneering work on the development of prophylactic human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, seroepidemiology, and basic aspects of papillomavirus infection. As co-inventor of HPV16 virus-like particle (VLP) technology with Drs Schiller and Lowy, in 1992, he was the first to describe the assembly from L1 into morphologically correct VLPs and the induction of high-level neutralizing antisera. In preclinical animal models, he then demonstrated VLP vaccine efficacy in rabbits and cows, which formed the basis for clinical HPV vaccine development. His inventions were licensed by MSD and GSK to permit them to develop and produce the current HPV vaccines, Gardasil (-9) and Cervarix. He also developed a VLP-based ELISA that has been widely used in seroepidemiology and vaccination trials. Besides basic work on the cellular papillomavirus receptor, he has developed a vaccine platform based on papillomavirus VLPs that carry foreign peptides on their surface to combat diseases like Alzheimer's disease or prion-related diseases. More recently he has developed chimeric HPV16 VLPs for cross-protection against a broad spectrum of HPV types that will be tested shortly in a phase I first-in-human clinical trial.