EBV The enemy that lives inside our bodies

Hank Balfour, a virologist at the University of Minnesota Medical School, was studying the long-term survival prospects of kidney transplant patients when he noticed that a small proportion of them went on to develop a rare form of cancer known as post-transplant proliferative disorder.

He was particularly intrigued when he discovered, back in the 1970s, that almost all of these patients had been infected with a virus called Epstein-Barr or EBV, a curious pathogen that has captivated and puzzled virushunters for decades.

“EBV can maintain latency within human cells,” says Balfour. “When we began studying it, it seemed that certain people were more prone to difficulties managing the virus immunologically, perhaps due to