Expression of EBV genes in nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Abstract

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is one of the most common carcinoma found in the Southern Chinese. It is closely associated with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). Although it is a general concept from early studies that EBV infection resulting in NPC tumor formation is predominantly restricted to the latency stage, present studies have suggested that some EBV lytic genes may be expressed in NPC biopsies.By using reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) technique, we have successfully constructed a profiling system which can detect EBV RNA expression and used this system to investigate the expression in NPC biopsies. Our results show that some EBV lytic genes are transcribed in NPC biopsies in addition to the latent genes that have been known to express. Among lytic genes, BHLF1 is found to be expressed in NPC for the first time. This study is also the first comprehensive study of EBV gene expression in NPC.