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About the Authors:
Laura J. Knoll
Affiliation: Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
Deborah A. Hogan
Affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, United States of America
ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6366-2971
John M. Leong
Affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
Joseph Heitman
* E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliation: Departments of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology (MGM), Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, and Medicine, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America
Richard C. Condit
Affiliation: Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States of AmericaCitation: Knoll LJ, Hogan DA, Leong JM, Heitman J, Condit RC (2018) Pearls collections: What we can learn about infectious disease and cancer. PLoS Pathog 14(3): e1006915. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1006915
Published: March 29, 2018
Copyright: © 2018 Knoll et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this study.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
“Although infectious agents are major contributors to cancer incidence worldwide, the importance of infectious agents in cancer causation remains relatively underappreciated by the general public and even the scientific community. In addition, mechanisms contributing to infection-related cancers and development of potential prevention and treatment approaches are arguably understudied. The development and implementation of the hepatitis B vaccine (HBV) to reduce the incidence of liver cancer and of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines to reduce the incidence of cervical and other HPV-associated cancers in both men and women has increased awareness of the importance and potential avenues for cancer prevention through infectious disease modulation, and more such examples are sure to follow.”
Michael B. Kastan, MD, PhD, Executive Director of the Duke Cancer Institute and William and Jane Shingleton Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology and Department of Pediatrics, Duke University Medical Center
Introduction
Infections are estimated to be responsible for up to 25% to 50% of all cancers that occur in humans. In light of this significant...