(Press-News.org) Development of a vaccine against Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) has taken a step forward with the Canadian discovery of how EBV infection evades detection by the immune system.
EBV causes infectious mononucleosis and cancers such as Hodgkin's lymphoma and nasopharyngeal carcinoma, which is the most common cancer in China, as well as opportunistic cancers in people with weakened immune systems. A member of the herpes virus family that remains in the body for life, the virus infects epithelial cells in the throat and immune cells called B cells.
The researchers discovered that the virus triggers molecular events that turn off key proteins, making infected cells invisible to the natural killer T (NKT) immune cells that seek and destroy EBV-infected cells.
"If you can force these invisible proteins to be expressed, then you can render infected cells visible to NKT cells, and defeat the virus. This could be key to making a vaccine that would provide immunity from ever being infected with EBV," says Dr. Rusung Tan, the study's principal investigator. Dr. Tan is a scientist and director of the Immunity in Health & Disease research group at the Child & Family Research Institute at BC Children's Hospital, and a professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of British Columbia.
The findings were published this week in the print edition of the scientific journal Blood.
For this study, the researchers looked at cells from infected tonsils that had been removed from patients at BC Children's Hospital by Dr. Frederick Kozak. The researchers infected the tonsillar B cells with EBV, and then combined some of these cells with NKT cells. They found that more NKT cells led to fewer EBV-infected cells, while an absence of NKT cells was associated with an increase in EBV-infected cells.
INFORMATION:
This research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research SLED Team for Childhood Autoimmunity, and BC Children's Hospital Foundation. Dr. Tan is a Michael Smith Foundation Senior Scholar.
The Child & Family Research Institute conducts discovery, translational and clinical research to benefit the health of children and their families. CFRI is supported by BC Children's Hospital Foundation and works in close partnership with the University of British Columbia,
BC Children's Hospital, and BC Women's Hospital & Health Centre (agencies of the Provincial Health Services Authority). For more information, visit http://www.cfri.ca.
BC Children's Hospital, an agency of the Provincial Health Services Authority, is British Columbia's (B.C.'s) only pediatric hospital and home to many specialized pediatric services available nowhere else in the province, including B.C.'s trauma centre for children, pediatric intensive care, kidney and bone marrow transplants, open heart surgery, neurosurgery and cancer treatment. Sunny Hill Health Centre for Children is the provincial facility that offers specialized child development and rehabilitation services to children and youth. For more information, please visit http://www.bcchildrens.ca.
The Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) plans, manages and evaluates selected specialty and province-wide health care services across BC, working with the five geographic health authorities to deliver province-wide solutions that improve the health of British Columbians. For more information, visit http://www.phsa.ca.
The University of British Columbia (UBC) is one of North America's largest public research and teaching institutions, and one of only two Canadian institutions consistently ranked among the world's 22 best universities. Surrounded by the beauty of the Canadian West, it is a place that inspires bold, new ways of thinking that have helped make it a national leader in areas as diverse as community service learning, sustainability and research commercialization. UBC offers more than 56,000 students a range of innovative programs and attracts $550 million per year in research funding from government, non-profit organizations and industry through over 8,000 projects and grants. For more information, please visit http://www.ubc.ca.
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