Anti-CD70 antibodies: a potential treatment for EBV+ CD70-expressing lymphomas.

A monoclonal antibody (Rituximab) directed against the B-cell surface antigen, CD20, is increasingly used as a therapy for B-cell lymphomas. However, CD20 is expressed on all normal mature B cells and hence is not a specific tumor target. In contrast, CD70 is expressed on highly activated lymphocytes as well as on many B-cell and T-cell lymphomas but is not expressed on the great majority of B cells and T cells.

Plasma cell (Zoon's) balanitis with concomitant HIV infection.

We report a case of the development of Zoon's balanitis in an African-American man with human immunodeficiency virus. Photographs of the clinical and pathological lesion are presented. To our knowledge, this has not been recently reported in urologic studies.

Epstein-Barr viral load as a marker of lymphoma in AIDS patients.

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is implicated in the pathogenesis of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) lymphoma, and viral DNA is present within the malignant cells in about half of affected patients. We examined the extent to which EBV viral load is elevated in the plasma of AIDS lymphoma patients compared to AIDS patients with opportunistic infections. Sixty-one AIDS patients were studied including 35 with lymphoma (24 non-Hodgkin, six Hodgkin, and five brain lymphoma) and 26 with various opportunistic infections.

Virally targeted therapies for EBV-associated malignancies.

In Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-positive lymphomas, the presence of the EBV genome in virtually all tumor cells, but very few normal cells, suggests that novel, EBV-targeted therapies could be used to treat these malignancies. In this paper, we review a variety of different approaches currently under development that specifically target EBV-infected cells for destruction. EBV-based strategies for treating cancer include prevention of viral oncogene expression, inducing loss of the EBV episome, the purposeful induction of the lytic form of EBV infection, and enhancing the host immune response to virally encoded antigens.

Chemotherapy induces lytic EBV replication and confers ganciclovir susceptibility to EBV-positive epithelial cell tumors.

EBV is an oncogenic herpesvirus associated with a number of human malignancies. The consistent presence of the EBV genome in certain tumors offers the potential for novel EBV-targeted therapies. EBV can infect cells in either a latent or lytic form.