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Epstein Barr virus (EBV) was discovered as the first human tumor virus around 50 years ago. Since its discovery in Burkitt's lymphoma it has been associated with various other malignancies, infectious mononucleosis and even autoimmune diseases. The two book volumes on EBV summarize the first 50 years of research on this tumor virus, starting with historical perspectives on discovery, oncogenicity and immune control, reviewing the role that the virus plays in the various associated diseases and concluding with a discussion on how the immune system keeps persistent EBV infection under control in healthy EBV carriers and can be used to treat EBV associated diseases. The respective 32 chapters are written by international experts from three continents for health care providers, biomedical researchers and patients that are affected by EBV. The assembled knowledge should help to understand EBV associated diseases better and to develop EBV specific vaccination in the near future.

Since its discovery as the cause of infectious mononucleosis in 1964, the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) has been etiologically implicated in an increasing number of human diseases. Generally considered the first human oncogenic virus because of a number of studies linking it with Burkitt's lymphoma and nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), as well as its documented oncogenicity in nonhuman primates, EBVhas served as a model for identifying subsequent candidate oncogenic viruses and the stimulus for Evans'revision of the Henle-Koch postulates to accommodate the problems in proving viral oncogenicity in humans. Research on the role of EBV in human cancer was particularly en­ hanced (a) by the pioneering work of Werner and Gertrude Henle, and (b) by the coordinated efforts of the Special Virus Leukemia Program and its successors, the Special Virus Cancer Program and the Virus Cancer Program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Initiated by Dr. Frank J. Rauscher, who subsequently became director of the Ncr and is now Vice-President of the American Cancer Society, and expanded by Dr. John B. Moloney, whose contributions to cancer research were honored at this Second International Symposium on EBV and Associated Malignant Diseases, these NCI contract-sup­ ported programs brought together investigators from all over the world to participate in a joint effort to unravel the mystery of EBV behavior and pathogenicity. It was these programs that gave us the opportunity to work with such outstanding people as Professor Yohei Ito, to whom this book is dedicated.