his colleagues at Kyoto University reported visualization of retroviral particles produced by a leukemia cell line derived from patients with Adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma. This virus turned out to be HTLV-1 and the research established the causal role of the HTLV-1 virus to ATL. Between 1984 and 1986 Harald zur Hausen and Lutz Gissmann discovered HPV16 and HPV18, together these Papillomaviridae viruses (HPV) are responsible for approximately 70% of human papillomavirus infections that cause cervical cancers. For the discovery that HPV cause human cancer the 2008 Nobel Prize was awarded. In 1987 the Hepatitis C virus (HCV) was discovered by panning a cDNA library made from diseased tissues for foreign antigens recognized by patient sera. This work was performed by Michael Houghton at Chiron, a biotechnology company, and Daniel W. Bradley at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). HCV was subsequently shown to be a major contributor to Hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer) worldwide. In 1994 Patrick S. Moore and Yuan Chang at Columbia University), working together with Ethel Cesarman, isolated Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV or HHV8) using representational difference analysis. This search was prompted by work from Valerie Beral and colleagues who inferred from the epidemic of Kaposi's sarcoma among patients with AIDS that this cancer must be caused by another infectious agent besides HIV, and that this was likely to be a second virus. Subsequent studies revealed that KSHV is the "KS agent" and is responsible for the epidemiologic patterns of KS and related cancers. In 2008 Yuan Chang and Patrick S. Moore developed a new method to identify cancer viruses based on computer subtraction of human sequences from a tumor transcriptome, called digital transcriptome subtraction (DTS). DTS was used to isolate DNA fragments of Merkel cell polyomavirus from a Merkel cell carcinoma and it is now believed that this virus causes 70–80% of these cancers. See also Infectious causes of cancer Carcinogen Oncogenic Oncogene Adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma Cancer bacteria Oncolytic virus, a virus that infects and kills cancer cells Gag-onc fusion protein List of infectious diseases References External links Carcinogenesis Virology Viruses Infectious causes of cancer