Research on Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus: past, present, and future

Book excerpt: It has been 16 years since Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) was found from Kaposi's sarcoma. Very extensive studies on KSHV have been performed and we now know well that KSHV is actually the very etiologic agent to cause Kaposi's sarcoma, primary effusion lymphoma and multicentric Castleman's disease and this virus is an oncogenic DNA virus in such sense. Though a lot of reports have been published, there are lots of enigmas on its epidemiology, entry, lytic replication/induction, viral particle assembly/egress, latency, oncogenesis and so on. At this time point, it is better for us to review what we learned from the studies of this virus and consider what we have to clarify about this virus nature for future by comparing the virus with the other virus research.