Epstein-Barr Virus and IL27 signaling

Happy weekend! I was reading about Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) this week, inspired by a Nature paper on the association between a cytokine receptor gene, IL27RA, and EBV infection. Researchers from INSERM in Paris have encountered a handful of children with severe EBV infection, who turned out to be knockouts for IL27RA. The gene encodes one of the two subunits of interleukin 27's receptor (IL27RA stands for interleukin 27 receptor subunit alpha). This is the first time researchers are learning about the role of IL27 signaling in EBV infection.

Genetic defects in immune genes increasing the susceptibility to EBV infection is not new. Scientists have known many genes that when lost result in severe EBV infection. But the case of IL27RA is special.

As you might remember learning in high school or in college that EBV is an oncogenic virus, meaning, it causes cancer. Not in everyone it infects. That would be crazy, as more than 95% of the population gets infected with EBV at some point in their life. Most wouldn't even know they did get infected. The virus can silently enter the human body through exchange of body fluids (often through kissing, hence the name 'kissing disease' for infectious mononucleosis) and reach their home that is B cells and live there for the rest of the human’s life. But a subset of humans, typically those with a weak immune system, develops cancer after EBV infection. EBV can cause different types of cancer: lymphomas, gastric cancer, nasopharyngeal cancer etc.

All previously known inborn errors of immunity linked to severe EBV infection have almost always led to cancer. And this is the first time, scientists are coming across a genetic defect that has resulted in severe EBV infection but hasn't resulted in cancer. Perhaps, these patients could be holding the answers to discovering medicines to prevent EBV-infected, immunocompromised individuals from developing cancer.

The discovery story of EBV

In this short YouTube video, Dorothy Crawford and Alan Rickinson, the authors of the book 'Cancer Virus', tell the story of the EBV discovery. The story begins sometime in the late 1950s in Kampala in Uganda, when an African child caught the attention of a British surgeon, Denis Burkitt, working in a local hospital. Fascinated by the facial