Epstein-Barr virus replicating in epithelial cells.

Abstract

Epstein–Barr virus (EBV), a ubiquitous and potentially oncogenic human herpesvirus (1), was discovered 50 y ago this year in a lymphoid cell line grown from a Burkitt lymphoma (2). Since that time, virus latency and replication have been intensively studied in B cells, which are easily infected and maintained in vitro. Nine years after its discovery in B cells, it was shown that EBV is also harbored in the epithelial cells of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (3). Study of the interaction of the virus with this cell type has, however, been significantly hampered by difficulties in establishing reproducible and robust infection in vitro. In PNAS, Temple et al. (4) report efficient replication of EBV in stratified epithelium. The authors generated organotypic or “raft” cultures from primary gingival or tonsil epithelial cells and successfully infected them from the apical surface either by overlaying cultures with EBV-producing B-cell lines or by addition of cell-free virus. The replicating virus spread throughout the suprabasal epithelium, expressing latency proteins along with those of the lytic cycle. No cells were found expressing latency proteins alone, and no virus was seen in the basal epithelium.