Natural Killer Cell transcriptome during primary EBV infection and EBV associated Hodgkin Lymphoma in children

Epstein Barr Viral infection is a common childhood infection in India and is also 100% etiologically associated with pediatric Hodgkin Lymphoma (HL). The main question in EBV immunobiology has been, why only a small subset of infected individuals develops EBV associated malignancies, while the vast majority carries this virus asymptomatically for life. Natural Killer (NK) cells have been considered to be crucial in preventing the development of symptomatic EBV infection and lymphoma. In order to get an insight into the various possible molecular aspects in the pathogenesis of both these EBV mediated diseases, we studied the whole transcriptome of NK cells from children with Infectious Mononucleosis (IM) and HL by using a massively parallel sequencing approach.