The literature suggests a link between ADAM17 and infection pathways regulated via the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) ERK1/2 signaling pathway because HPV16 infection requires activation of ERK signaling via EGFR (Surviladze et al., 2012) and ADAM17 mediates cleavage of growth factors that activate ERK1/2 (Kansra et al., 2004; Göoz et al., 2006; Sommer et al., 2016). Here, EGFR is linked to infection.