Anthony Epstein, pathologist behind Epstein-Barr virus find, dies at 102
Anthony Epstein, a British pathologist whose chance attendance at a lecture on childhood tumors in Africa began years of scientific sleuthing that led to the discovery of the ultra-common EpsteinBarr virus and opened expansive research into its viral links to cancers and other chronic ailments, died Feb. 6 at his home in London. He was 102.
His partner, Katherine Ward, confirmed the death but gave no specific cause.
Epstein’s work in the1960s to isolate the virus — a type of herpes — set the foundation for sweeping studies into viral and biological triggers for cancers such as Hodgkin’s lymphoma and potential links to other diseases including multiple sclerosis, lupus and, most recently, so-called long covid.
The research later expanded to detect other cancer-causing viruses such the human papillomavirus, or HPV. Unlike HPV, however, no vaccine has been developed for Epstein-Barr, named for Epstein and colleague Yvonne Barr, which is believed present in more than 90 percent of the world’s population.
“Everyone is putting a brick in the wall,” Epstein said about the multiple fronts of research on the Epstein-Barr virus. “It is the accumulation of bricks which makes the building.”
For most people, Epstein-Barr is a silent hitchhiker. It is spread through saliva and other bodily fluids and often acquired during childhood. The virus sits in throat and blood cells, maybe flaring up as mononucleosis or a bout of lethargy, or with no symptoms at all. Yet in some cases, the virus takes off by rapid replication in host cells.
“It’s very stealthy,” Jeffrey Cohen, the chief of the infectious-diseases laboratory at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the New York Times in 2022.
This is the point where the science gets hazier. There’s consensus that a surge in the Epstein-Barr virus has an association with some cancers of the stomach, nasal system and blood. Less clear is how much the virus acts as a possible springboard for other cancers, serious inflammations such as viral meningitis and an array of autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis.
A complication is that Epstein-Barr is so prevalent that researchers have trouble proving direct cause and effect. But the virus, which can be grown and sustained in lab settings, has become invaluable in cancer studies by watching its effect on healthy cells and tissue.
“We can monitor how [the virus] acts in all kinds of biological environments and with different cells,” Sumita Bhaduri-McIntosh, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Florida College of Medicine, said in an interview. “It’s an invaluable model for research into how things go wrong.”
For Epstein, the unfulfilled search for a vaccine remained a lifelong frustration. In the latest vaccine efforts, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 2022 began the first clinical trials in more than a decade. “The chain is not understood but the evidence is,” said Epstein on how the virus appears to contribute to higher rates of cancers and diseases. “But without [the virus] you don’t have a continuous chain … [and] you can remove that by vaccinating to prevent infection.”
Decades earlier, his work with the virus began with pure scientific serendipity. In 1961, Epstein heard about a lecture at Middlesex Hospital Medical School in London by a Northern Ireland-born surgeon, Denis Burkitt, who was based in Uganda and researching a mysterious tumor found in some local children, often in their jaw. Epstein at the time had been studying links between viruses and diseases in birds and other animals.