Tribute to Anthony Epstein who discovered the first human cancer-causing Epstein-Barr virus: The subject in precise on his demise

Oncovirus: avian and humanInvariably, cancer is not contagious except transplant-related cancer.However, virus induced cancer in man and animal is infectious.During undergraduate professional course, we have come across two important viruses one is Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and another Rous sarcoma virus (RSV).Those are tumor inducing viruses.RSV causes tumor in avian species, and EBV is responsible for Burkitt's lymphoma in human.Surprisingly, we have never shown any interest to know how these two viruses have been named.Long back, in 1910, a woman brought a hen (Plymouth Barred Rock) having a large tumor to Rockefeller Institute, New York (now Rockefeller University).At that time, a researcher, Francis Peyton Rous working at Rockefeller Institute, showed interest to investigate the reason behind the tumor.He used cell-free tumor extract, devoid of bacterial contaminant, to confirm the transmissibility of tumor production in healthy chicken and observed that tumor inducing agent was no other than a virus (Rous, 1910;Rous, 1911).Initially, critics were reluctant to accept the oncogenic character of the virus.Once several reports substantially proved that transmission of murine cancer could be developed following inoculation of cell-free extract of tumor tissue, gradually viral oncogenicity received scientific support (Gross, 1951).According to the name of Francis Peyton Rous, the virus had been named as Rous sarcoma virus (RSV) that could induce soft tissue tumor, called sarcoma.For his discovery, Rous claimed fame as a Nobel Prize recipient in 1966.During early 1960, a British pathologist, Michael Anthony Epstein at Middlesex Hospital in London, UK was also working on the Rous sarcoma virus.Subsequently, Epstein, along with his student Yvonne Barr, isolated the first human oncogenic virus from Burkitt's lymphoma, a cancer prevalent in African children (Epstein et al., 1964).According to their name, the virus had been named as Epstein-Barr virus.They also recorded that the virus was capable to transform normal lymphocytes to lymphoblastoid cell line.So,