Epstein-Barr Virus in Breast Cancer Tissues
Creators: name: University Of California Office Of The President
Publisher: name: University of California Office of the President
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/00dmfq477
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2024

description: Nearly all persons are infected with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) by adulthood and remain chronically infected for life. While almost all EBV infections are benign, a small percentage of infected persons develop certain cancers (lymphomas, stomach cancer, nasal cancer) with this virus present. Recent studies suggest a link between EBV and breast cancer. Understanding this link is potentially important and timely, as it would not only provide new knowledge about breast cancer but also help identify women at risk for this type of breast cancer, who might benefit from use of the virus as a tumor burden marker that could potentially assist in early diagnosis or in measurement of post-therapy residual disease. However, study findings about the EBV-breast cancer association have been variable, due in large part to technical laboratory difficulties in determining if EBV in breast tumors is in the breast cancer cells themselves, which would suggest that the virus impacts tumor development. New laboratory technologies are available that could be used to overcome the previous technical limitations in this research, but these tests need to be developed to reliably detect EBV in stored breast cancer tissues.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Although scientific evidence is mixed, breast cancer is now hypothesized to be related to EBV in some patients. However, the virus may be difficult to detect in breast tumors because it is defective or partially deleted or may be present in only a minority of tumor cells. Development of new sensitive laboratory tests can help us overcome these problems and study the EBV-breast cancer link so as to accurately determine the proportion of women with EBV in their tumors and begin to describe their characteristics with regard to age at diagnosis, race, socioeconomic status, extent of disease spread, and survival.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 We will first identify a group of 100 Greater Bay Area women with breast cancer who are representative of all patients with this disease. With their permission, we will obtain very small samples of their tumor tissue left over from their diagnosis, and we will test these for EBV using new, state-of-the-art laboratory procedures that we will develop as part of this study. One of these tests, called “real-time PCR”, is so powerful that it lets us find "a needle in a haystack”, and then count how many “needles” are present. (PCR or polymerase chain reaction is a technique for rapidly producing many copies of a fragment of DNA.) This laboratory test will allow us to determine how much EBV is present in each breast cancer tissue sample. Another new method, called ”laser capture microdissection”, will allow us to further determine if EBV we detect is in the cancer cells or merely in the surrounding normal cells. Once we have developed the tests to reliably determine if a breast cancer contains EBV, we will be able to begin identifying the characteristics of women (i.e., age, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, extent of disease spread, prognosis) who have this type of breast cancer.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Investigating the possible link between EBV and breast cancer is important because it will help us better understand why this important cancer of women develops, and it may provide new tools that can be used for early diagnosis, treatment and prevention. The study is innovative in combining the best laboratory methods now available to look for EBV in breast tumor cells, and in studying a representative group of women to maximize the chances of identifying those at risk for EBV-related breast cancer. If EBV is found to be present in cancer cells of even a small percentage of patients, these women may be candidates for new therapies that target infected cells.