Murray P G
Medical School University of Birmingham, UK.
J Pathol. 2006 Aug;209(4):427-9. doi: 10.1002/path.2032.
The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) has been reported to be associated with a variety of different tumours; for some of these malignancies, including breast cancer, the association remains controversial. This might be due in part to differences in the methodologies used to detect EBV in tissue samples. One approach favoured by many groups is to use immunohistochemistry to detect an EBV protein, EBNA1, which is essential for the maintenance of viral latency in infected cells and therefore should be a good marker for the presence of the virus. However, in this issue of the Journal of Pathology, Hennard and colleagues report that one of the antibodies frequently employed to detect EBNA1 in tissue samples cross-reacts with the MAGE4 protein, a cancer testis antigen expressed in many cancer types. Their observation suggests that reports documenting an EBV association on the basis of reactivity with this antibody must be considered unreliable. It also re-opens the debate about whether breast cancer is an EBV-associated disease.
据报道，爱泼斯坦-巴尔病毒（EBV）与多种不同肿瘤有关；对于其中一些恶性肿瘤，包括乳腺癌，这种关联仍存在争议。部分原因可能是用于检测组织样本中EBV的方法存在差异。许多研究小组青睐的一种方法是使用免疫组织化学来检测EBV蛋白EBNA1，它对于维持感染细胞中的病毒潜伏状态至关重要，因此应该是病毒存在的良好标志物。然而，在本期《病理学杂志》中，亨纳德及其同事报告称，在组织样本中常用于检测EBNA1的一种抗体与MAGE4蛋白发生交叉反应，MAGE4蛋白是一种在多种癌症类型中表达的癌胚抗原。他们的观察结果表明，基于与该抗体反应性记录EBV关联的报告必须被视为不可靠。这也重新引发了关于乳腺癌是否为EBV相关疾病的争论。
