Control of viral disease: the development of Epstein-Barr virus vaccines

Abstract

Since the discovery of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in an African Burkitt 's lymphoma biopsy by M.A. Epstein in 1964 [17], research into the molecular biology and immunology of infection by this virus has grown to be a major field of interest. The association of EBV with two major human cancers, endemic Burkitt 's lymphoma [41] (BL) and undifferentiated nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) [16, 28, 79, 80] led to the proposal for the development of a vaccine to prevent infection by the virus to reduce the incidence of, or to eliminate entirely, cancers associated with EBV infection [15]. The development of EBV vaccines, starting with the conventional subunit type, has closely paralleled developments in DNA technology, adjuvant research and advances in the immunology of EBV. This account describes the development of EBV vaccines in recent years starting with purified envelope glycoproteins as subunit vaccines and extending to live recombinant virus vectors and synthetic peptides. Such has been the progress in this field that Phase I human trials on a recombinant-derived purified envelope glycoprotein subunit vaccine are scheduled for the near future.