Developing vaccines against EBV-associated diseases

The past ten years have seen a dramatic accumulation of insights into the biology, immunology and virology of EBV so that for the first time rational vaccine development can begin. Thus the targets molecules present on latency I, II and III diseases have been well defined and the relative importance of both the cellular and the humoral responses are understood at least in the broad sense. Several vaccine trials towards infectious mononucleosis (IM) and post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease (PTLD) have been conducted and others are planned. While formulating vaccines for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL) are more speculative, there is good reason to believe that formulations encompassing cytotoxic T cell (CTL) epitopes encoded by LMP1 and LMP2 should have therapeutic benefit. On the other hand, there is little prospect for a vaccine to reverse the rapid growth of Burkitt's lymphoma