Image:
Caption:
Tomas Olsson.
Photo: Andreas Andersson
“The discovery opens up new treatments that target these cross-reactive immune cells. Since several EBV vaccines and antiviral drugs are now being tested in clinical trials, the results may be of great importance for future preventive and therapeutic efforts,” says Professor Tomas Olsson, who led the study together with Associate Professor Andre Ortlieb Guerreiro-Cacais at the same institution.
The study is a collaboration between several research groups at Karolinska Institutet and has been funded by, among others, the Swedish Research Council, the EU’s Horizon program, the Swedish Brain Foundation, and the Swedish Neurological Association. Several of the article’s authors have links to pharmaceutical companies; see the scientific article for a complete list of conflicts of interest.
Publication
”Anoctamin-2-specific T Cells Link Epstein-Barr Virus to Multiple Sclerosis”, Olivia G. Thomas, Urszula Rykaczewska, Marina Galešić, Rianne T. M. van der Burgt, Nils Hallén, Filippo Ferro, Mattias Bronge, Zoe Marti, Yue Li, Alexandra Hill Riqué, Jianing Lin, Aleksa Krstic, Alicja Gromadzka, András Levente Szonder, Chiara Sorini, María Reina-Campos, Ting Sun, Leslie A. Rubio Rodríguez-Kirby, Özge Dumral, Rasmus Berglund, Majid Pahlevan Kakhki, Milena Z. Adzemovic, Manuel Zeitelhofer, Birce Akpinar, Katarina Tengvall, Ola B. Nilsson, Erik Holmgren, Chiara Starvaggi Cucuzza, Klara Asplund Högelin, Guro Gafvelin, Katharina Fink, Gonçalo Castelo-Branco, Maria Needhamsen, Mohsen Khademi, Fredrik Piehl, Torbjörn Gräslund, Lars Alfredsson, Harald Lund, Per Uhlén, Ingrid Kockum, Roland Martin, Maja Jagodic, Hans Grönlund, André Ortlieb Guerreiro-Cacais, Tomas Olsson, Cell, online January 13, 2026, doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2025.12.032