In a London lab in 1963, a discovery would change medicine forever. Virologist Yvonne Barr identified the first virus known to cause cancer in humans: the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV).

Born in Ireland, Yvonne Barr (1932–2016) studied Zoology at Trinity College, Dublin, excelling in her studies and graduating with a degree in in 1953.

By the mid-1950s, she was working as a research assistant at the London National Institute for Medical Research, where she mastered cell culture, the technique of growing cells under controlled conditions. 

Barr’s skills proved crucial when a pathologist, Anthony Epstein, hired her to work in his lab in Middlesex Hospital Medical School (now part of UCL). Epstein had heard about exceptionally large facial tumours in Ugandan children, called Burkitt lymphoma. He believed they were caused by a virus – but struggled to keep the cancer cells alive long enough to study them.

When Barr came on board, she successfully kept the cells alive in suspension culture, long enough for their team to produce an image of them. When Epstein and Barr looked at the first image, they saw something unexpected: the signature outline of a herpes virus. They’d found the culprit and named it the Epstein-Barr virus.

This was the first time that any cells from the human lymphocytic series had ever been grown in vitro.

Sir Anthony Epstein

Scientists have since discovered that up to 95% of all adults are infected with EBV. It’s now best known for causing glandular fever and having a link to Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the white blood cells.

Barr received her doctorate in 1966. She emigrated to Australia with her husband and left behind biomedical research to become a Maths and Science teacher.

While her vital contribution to the research was overlooked during her lifetime, Barr has since been recognised as central to the discovery of EBV. Her work helped launch a new field of research into viral oncology – the study of cancer-causing viruses - and raised the possibility of preventing cancers through vaccination, which has since been achieved through the vaccination for human papilloma virus (HPV).


Top photo: Yvonne Barr, 1962. (c) Gregory Morgan, Cancer Virus Hunters, Johns Hopkins University Press (2022)

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