When a shipment of precious human tumor samples en route to Heathrow Airport from Kampala, Uganda, was diverted to Manchester, it didn't seem like a good thing. When the samples finally arrived at London's Middlesex Hospital, they were swimming in a cloudy liquid inside the vial, as if infected with bacteria.
But when pathologist Anthony Epstein looked at the fluid under a microscope, he saw no bacteria, only individual cells that had been shaken off from the tumor. And that's exactly what was needed to search for the elusive viral particles and test the intuition that they are causing cancer.
In the early 1960s, Epstein, who has died at the age of 102, was listening to a lecture by Dennis Burkitt, an Irish surgeon working in Kampala, who described strange tumors growing around the jaws of children in equatorial Africa. (now known as Burkitt's lymphoma) was said to be growing.
Interestingly, the geographic distribution of this condition appears to be dependent on temperature and rainfall, suggesting a biological cause. Professor Epstein, who was studying a virus that causes cancer in chickens, immediately suspected that the virus was involved, perhaps in connection with another tropical disease, such as malaria.
Epstein began collaborating with Burkitt, who provided him with tumors from children he treated. But Epstein's efforts to grow parts of the tumor in the lab and isolate the virus all failed until the dissociated cells arrived.
So he and graduate student Yvonne Barr decided to look at cultures of these cells using an electron microscope. This electron microscope is a powerful piece of equipment that has only recently become available in laboratories.
The very first image showed an outline of what appeared to be some type of herpes virus. It turned out to be a previously undescribed member of the family and was given the name Epstein-Barr virus. In 1964, Epstein, Barr, and Epstein's research assistant Bart Achon published the first evidence that human cancer could be caused by a virus. Despite continuing to demonstrate that EBV caused tumors in monkeys, it was met with widespread skepticism.
Thanks to samples provided by Epstein, in 1970 Werner and Gertrude Henle at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia discovered that the EBV virus also caused glandular fever. This made it possible to design a test for antibodies against the virus to confirm the diagnosis. It turns out that the EBV virus is very common, and most children are infected during childhood, but it usually only causes glandular fever in older teenagers and young adults. It causes Burkitt's lymphoma in endemic areas of Africa and Papua New Guinea, as well as cancers of the nose and throat, which are the most common cancers in men in southern China, and cancers in people whose immune systems are not working properly. It is also related to People with HIV and others are at risk.
Recent research suggests that EEB virus may also be involved in some cases of multiple sclerosis, and that people who have previously had glandular fever may be more susceptible to severe COVID-19 infection. It is suggested that it is easy.
After its discovery, Epstein and his colleagues devoted time and effort to understanding the circumstances under which the EBV virus causes cancer. The relationship between viruses, other diseases, human genetics, and cancer is complex, and it took decades for the medical community to confidently accept EBV as a cause.
Only in 1997 did the International Agency for Research on Cancer classify it as a Group 1 carcinogen, officially recognizing its role in various cancers.
The discovery of EBV has opened a whole new field of research into oncogenic viruses. It also raises the intriguing possibility that vaccination could prevent cancer, with advances now being made for human papillomavirus, which causes cervical cancer, and hepatitis B virus, which causes liver cancer. I am.
By the time Epstein retired in 1985, his research group at the University of Bristol had developed a vaccine candidate that would protect monkeys infected with Epstein from tumors, but neither this vaccine nor any other candidate had been developed for humans. has not yet been successful.
Epstein was born in London, one of three children of Olga (née Oppenheimer) and Mortimer Epstein. Mortimer was a writer and translator who edited the Statesman's Yearbook for Macmillan from 1924 until his death in 1946. Olga was involved in charity work in the Jewish community. Anthony attended St. Paul's School in west London, where biology teacher Sidney Pask encouraged his boys to study far beyond the syllabus, and where his students included Robert Winston. and Jonathan Miller.
Epstein won a place to study medicine at Trinity College, Cambridge. He completed his training at wartime medical school at Middlesex Hospital in London, and then did national service in India with the Royal Army Medical Corps. He returned to Middlesex Hospital as a pathologist's assistant and conducted his own research. Believing that electron microscopy might be useful in studying carcinogenic viruses in chickens, he spent time learning new techniques at the Rockefeller Institute (now Rockefeller University) in New York. Shortly thereafter, he attended Burkitt's lectures and began his unexpected path to discovery.
In 1968 he was appointed Professor and Head of Pathology at the University of Bristol, where he remained until his retirement. He moved to Oxford as a Fellow of Wolfson College in his 1986 year and became an Honorary Fellow in 2001.
An exemplary scientific citizen, he served as Foreign Secretary and Vice-President of the Royal Society and served on the boards and councils of numerous national and international research organizations, including Special Representative of the Director-General of UNESCO. Ta. He was also a patron of Humanists UK. He has received numerous awards and honorary degrees, among them the International Gardner Award for Biomedical Research, which he received in 1988. He was appointed CBE in 1985 and knighted in 1991.
In a conversation with Burkitt recorded for the Oxford Brookes University Oral History Archive in 1991, he said of his discovery: “Really, it was a series of accidents. A lucky quirk.” Burkitt immediately responded with Louis Pasteur's maxim, “Chance favors the prepared mind.”
Epstein was a deeply educated man who remained active in many subjects until the end of his life, especially Oriental rugs, Tibet, and amphibians.
He is survived by his partner Kate Ward, his children Susan, Simon and Michael from his marriage to Lisbeth Knight, who separated in 1965 and died in 2015, as well as two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
