From the Molecular Biology of Oncogenic DNA Viruses to Cancer

Oncogenic viruses, able to elicit tumour formation in animals, have been on the scientific scene for many years. After the early discovery of Ellerman and Bang at the beginning of this century, Peyton Rous opened up the field in its second decade and in prophetic words gave a good hint of things to come. However, these discoveries were soon forgotten and only after a long eclipse was interest in oncogenic viruses revived in the fifties. My involvement in this field began at that time when Rubin and Temin worked in my laboratory with the Rous Sarcoma Virus. When in 1958 polyoma virus, a new oncogenic virus with different properties, was isolated, I jumped at the new opportunity and started working with it. Within a short time polyoma virus became the main interest of my laboratory, to be joined, a few years later by SV40, another papovavirus. It became clear fairly soon that the molecular biology of these viruses could be worked out, and I set out to find the molecular basis of cancer induction. The results that I and a number of brilliant young collaborators have obtained during the following fifteen years have brought us close to that goal. I will review the most interesting steps of our work and will then ask some questions concerning the nature of cancer and about perspectives for prevention and treatment. I stress the relevance of my work for cancer research because I believe that science must be useful to man.