Dr. Anthony Epstein, pathologist who discovered the Epstein-Barr virus, dies at 102

In March 1961, Dr. Anthony Epstein, a pathologist at the Middlesex Hospital in London, almost skipped a visiting doctor’s afternoon lecture on children with exceptionally large facial tumors in Uganda.

The doctor, Dr. Denis Burkitt, a native of Ireland who called himself a “bush surgeon,” showed slides of spherical tumors that emerged along the jawline and occurred in tropical African areas that received heavy rainfall. During his lecture, Dr. Burkitt mapped a veritable childhood cancer belt that stretched across equatorial Africa.

Despite Dr.’s initial reluctance. Epstein to attend the lecture – he sat in the back to make a quick escape – his excitement grew as Dr. Burkitt spoke longer. By the time the lecture was over, he knew he would be abandoning all his ongoing projects to find the cause of the unusual malignancy. His PhD student, Yvonne Barr, soon joined him and in 1964 their groundbreaking research identified the first virus that could cause cancer in humans.

He shook the scientific world with the announcement. Some doctors and scientists cheered the discovery; others refused to accept it.

Dr. Epstein died on February 6 at his home in London. He was 102. His death was confirmed by the University of Bristol, where Dr. Epstein was a professor of pathology from 1968 to 1985 and was also head of the department for fifteen years.

The pathogen that named him and Dr. Barr came to carry – the Epstein-Barr virus – belongs to the herpes family and is one of the most ubiquitous on Earth. It is estimated that 90 percent of the world’s adult population carries the virus, also known as EBV

“Having the insight and being able to follow his hypothesis, with a little acknowledged serendipity, and identify the new virus was groundbreaking,” said Dr. Darryl Hill, head of the School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Bristol in England. in an email.

Studies since Dr.’s discovery Epstein have linked EBV, which is spread through close human contact, to many medical conditions, including multiple sclerosis and long Covid. As with other members of the herpes family, once infected with EBV you are infected for life.

“Most people never know they are infected,” Jeffrey Cohen, head of the Infectious Diseases Laboratory at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told The New York Times in 2022.

EBV is the cause of glandular fever, the so-called kissing disease, which mainly affects teenagers and young adults with fever and swollen lymph nodes. EBV is also associated with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and a nose and throat cancer common in China.

The tumor that affects children in Africa, known as Burkitt’s lymphoma, has also been diagnosed in other tropical areas, such as Brazil and New Guinea. Medical scientists theorize that EBV causes childhood lymphomas in tropical areas because children in such areas often have weakened immunity from exposure to malaria parasites. The World Health Organization estimates that three to six cases of Burkitt’s lymphoma per 100,000 children occur annually in endemic areas.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the discovery of EBV in 2014, Dr. Epstein told an interviewer at the BBC what he had thought when he watched Dr. Burkitt listened.

“I thought there must be a biological agent involved,” said Dr. Epstein. “I worked on chicken viruses that cause cancer. I had virus-inducing tumors in the front of my head.”

The chicken virus he was referring to was the Rous sarcoma virus, which, when discovered in 1911 by Dr. Francis Peyton Rous, a pathologist at Rockefeller University in New York, was the first cancer-causing virus. Dr. Rous won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1966. Although a Nobel Prize Drs. Epstein and Barr, their discovery has had a lasting impact on science and medicine.

“We now know of several types of viruses and bacteria that can cause certain types of cancer,” said Dr. Hill. “One could argue, however, that the discovery of the Epstein-Barr virus paved the way for the prevention of some cancers through vaccination.”

Vaccines are available against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, which causes cervical and other cancers. The hepatitis B vaccine helps prevent liver cancer. But there is no vaccine against Epstein-Barr, although two vaccine candidates are in early phase clinical trials.

The discovery of EBV did not come quickly. Dr. Burkitt sent tumor biopsies from Kampala, Uganda to London, but Dr. Epstein couldn’t find any viruses in the early specimens, according to Dr. Hill, who wrote an article memory from Dr. Epstein for the University of Bristol.

When another biopsy shipment was diverted from Heathrow Airport to another airport in Manchester, England, due to fog, the sample seemed doomed, said Dr. Hill.

“By the time the sample reached Tony, it had turned cloudy – usually a sign of bacterial contamination that sent it into the trash. Tony did not throw it away, but carefully examined it,” Dr. wrote. Hill in his tribute.

“To his surprise, he discovered that the clouding was due to lymphoid tumor cells that had been shaken off the biopsy during transport and were now happily floating in the air.” He continued: “Tony took advantage of this serendipitous finding to grow cell lines derived from the tumor in culture. He showed that these remained alive indefinitely.”

By studying his new sample with a powerful electron microscope, Dr. Epstein discovered the clear viral signature of a herpes virus. Dr. Hill called the discovery a eureka moment.

Drs. Epstein, Barr and Bert Achong, who prepared the samples for electron microscopy, announced the discovery in a scientific article published in the March 1964 issue of the scientific journal The Lancet.

Dr. Barr died in 2016 at the age of 83.

Michael Anthony Epstein was born on May 18, 1921 in London and educated at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. According to Wolfson College of the University of Oxford, he was a graduate of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School.

After leaving Bristol University in 1985, Dr. Epstein was a fellow at Wolfson College and remained at the institution until his retirement in 2001. In 1991 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

His marriage to Lisbeth Knight ended in divorce in the 1960s. Survivors include his longtime partner, Dr. Katherine Ward, a virologist, two sons from his marriage, Michael and Simon Epstein, and a daughter, Susan Holmes.

He told the BBC in 2014 that one of his fondest wishes was to develop a vaccine against EBV. His wish may become a reality in the not-too-distant future if current research prevails.