Overlooked No More: Yvonne Barr, Who Helped Discover a Cancer-Causing Virus

This article is a part of Overlooked, a collection of obituaries about exceptional individuals whose deaths, starting in 1851, went unreported in The Times.

Yvonne Barr was a 31-year-old analysis assistant in search of a brand new problem when she was employed by a pathologist in London in 1963 to assist discover the reason for an uncommon malignancy: exceptionally massive facial tumors in Ugandan kids.

The pathologist, Anthony Epstein, was nearly sure that the tumors have been attributable to a virus, however he was struggling to show his speculation.

Barr was by then recognized for her superior laboratory abilities, having labored on the bacterium that causes Hansen’s illness, generally known as leprosy, in addition to different tasks.

While she had mastered cell tradition strategies — primarily selling the expansion of cells underneath managed circumstances — Epstein was having bother sustaining the expansion of cells in his lab.

“This was a key to the research — propagating cells that can continue to grow and become experimental specimens,” mentioned Gregory J. Morgan, writer of “Cancer Virus Hunters: A History of Tumor Virology” (2022). “Yvonne Barr had experience producing and caring for cell cultures before coming to Epstein’s lab in 1963, and perhaps this is why he hired her.”

Together, they might go on to make one of many twentieth century’s most important scientific discoveries: the primary virus linked to inflicting most cancers in people, which got here to be generally known as the Epstein-Barr virus.

Epstein’s loss of life final month was famous by news retailers around the globe. But when Barr died in 2016, few newspapers reported it, almost certainly as a result of quickly after the virus discovery, in 1964, she pivoted to a quiet profession in educating, which she pursued for many years.

Barr had first sought analysis positions in Australia, the place she had moved along with her husband, however was unable to land one.

“Her case illustrates the pervasive sexism of mid-20th century biomedicine,” mentioned Morgan, an affiliate professor of the historical past and philosophy of science on the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. “She found science in Australia a bit of a boys club and could not obtain a permanent position.”

Yvonne Margaret Barr was born on March 11, 1932, in Carlow, Ireland, about an hour southwest of Dublin, the oldest of 4 kids of Robert and Gertrude Barr. Her father was a banking supervisor.

She graduated from Banbridge Academy, in Northern Ireland, as head prefect, a place awarded to college students designated as leaders and mentors. At Trinity College, in Dublin, she shined once more, incomes a level in zoology and graduating with honors in 1953.

It was by way of jobs as analysis assistants from 1955 to 1962 that she gained her laboratory abilities. At the London National Institute for Medical Research, she labored on the bacterium that causes leprosy and realized the cell propagation approach generally known as cell tradition.

A second place, as a analysis assistant on the University of Toronto, allowed one more alternative to hone lab abilities in experiments involving canine distemper virus, a pathogen that may trigger a severe and sometimes deadly an infection in canine in addition to in different animals.

But as Barr was mastering cell tradition strategies, Epstein, who labored at Middlesex Hospital Medical School in London, was combating them, Morgan mentioned.

In 1963, Epstein obtained a $45,000 analysis grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and employed Barr and Bert Achong, an knowledgeable in electron microscopy. Both would full doctorates whereas working in Epstein’s lab.

Epstein was already collaborating with Denis Burkitt, a surgeon and Presbyterian missionary in Uganda, who was sending tissue samples to London from biopsied facial tumors afflicting Ugandan kids.

The most cancers was generally known as Burkitt lymphoma, and since the tumors occurred in sure equatorial places, Epstein strongly suspected a viral trigger. What he wanted was a more practical option to develop cells that presumably harbored the virus.

With Barr’s strategies, the crew was in a position to maintain clusters of cells. Their analysis was the primary to make use of cell tradition strategies to check human B cells, those affected in Burkitt lymphoma, Morgan mentioned.

In July 2022, The Irish Times quoted Barr as explaining why she thought Epstein’s early efforts weren’t working. “By the time I arrived at the Middlesex, I had a lot of tissue culture experience,” she wrote in an undated recollection. “I felt Epstein was throwing out the good cells. I applied my methods and every few days gave the cells a wash and new food.”

A tumor pattern from Burkitt that originally appeared doomed after fog at Heathrow Airport delayed the supply, turned out to be the one bearing definitive proof of a causative virus.

“One day some of them were glistening, and that was thought to be a sign of life,” Barr, talking from Australia, informed a London convention by video in 2014. “There was great excitement, and the thing was to get enough for electron microscopy.”

From that cell cluster, Achong captured a crisp picture, and Epstein instantly acknowledged the clear signature of a herpes virus that was new to science. The wrongdoer was discovered. University of Pennsylvania researchers confirmed the outcomes.

“The virus was named after the cell culture in which it was found,” Morgan defined. “The cell cultures were labeled EB1, for Epstein Barr 1, EB2, EB3, etc.”

Epstein-Barr virus, or E.B.V., can also be the reason for mononucleosis and is strongly related to Hodgkin’s lymphoma. An estimated 90 p.c of the world’s grownup inhabitants carries the virus.

Barr obtained a doctorate in 1966, a yr after her marriage to Stuart Balding, an industrial chemist. After emigrating to Australia, that they had two kids, Kirsten and Sean Balding. She earned a diploma in training and have become a highschool math and science trainer. Her work in biomedical analysis had ended with the invention in Epstein’s lab.

“She thought of the discovery as a small part of her life,” Kirsten Balding mentioned in an interview. “I think she loved being a teacher and helping kids.”

Barr died on Feb. 13, 2016, in Melbourne after growing a number of medical issues, together with diabetes and congestive coronary heart failure, her daughter mentioned. She was 83.