The magazine of the european research area European Commission Copenhagen, a missed chance?

INTERVIEW 

A fundamental 

researcher

Your Nobel Prize crowns a life spent entirely 

on fundamental research into cancer, and partic-

ularly the infectious viruses that cause it. 

What set you on this path?

Back when I was doing my doctorate in med-

icine in the ’60s, I became interested in 

what were then the very beginnings of research 

into the role of viruses in causing cancer. At the 

time, although the infectious origin of certain 

cancerous animal tumours had already been 

certified since the beginning of the century, we 

were still groping our way down a small number 

of hypothetical avenues to try and understand 

the viral processes that might be involved in 

humans. I started working with Gertrude and 

Werner Henle in the United States on Burkitt’s 

lymphoma (

1

). In 1964 English biologists Michael 

Epstein and Yvonne Barr identified its associa-

tion with the EBV herpes virus carrying their 

name. For me the central issue was the role 

played by this virus in the genome of epithelial 

cells. Returning to Germany, I was able to set 

up a research group at the Würzburg Institute 

of Virology. We found that, when contamination 

occurs, DNA of the EBV virus can be identified 

in Burkitt’s lymphoma cells that are not yet 

producing viruses. It was an important result, 

showing that the subsequent growth of tumours 

resulted from a genomic cause.

It is from here that you directed your research 

towards cervical cancer?

Yes, it is from this background that I started 

working on this disease, which is the second 

most common cause of cancer in women. 

At the time, its possibly infectious origin was 

largely attributed to the simplex herpes virus, 

spread by sexual contact. But the DNA identi-

fication techniques then available to us did 

not yet confirm any result in this direction.