Epstein‐Barr Virus Vaccine for the Prevention of Infectious Mononucleosis—and What Else?

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Abstract
Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is implicated in the pathogenesis of a farrago of diseases, from mild self-limited infections to fulminant malignancies. A vaccine to prevent EBV infection was proposed by Epstein and Achong [1] as long ago as 1973, approximately a decade after their group discovered this human γ-herpesvirus [2, 3]. Development of an EBV vaccine, however, has been agonizingly slow because of difficulties in establishing a suitable animal model and, also, because of disparate viewpoints about what the vaccine could or should actually achieve [4].