In-Silico Study on the Role of Epstein Barr Virus to Translocate Tobacco Constituents into Blood to Lead to Oral Cancer

ASM Sc. J., 20(2), 2025

Published on September 11, 2025

https://doi.org/10.32802/asmscj.2025.0067

Author: Monika Dheer, Annette Angel, Vinod Joshi, Shareef Mohammed Buvvaji, Bennet Angel, Hemant Sawhney, Rohit Saxena, Neha Singh, Bhawna Sharma, Khushbu Kumari, Aarya Chitransh, Prigya Sharma

Abstract

Tobacco contains more than 7000 compounds, out of which 69 are harmful which may lead to various types of cancer. Of these, N- nitrosamine, nicotine and Tar have been reported to reactivate Epstein-Barr virus from its latent phase to lytic phase and cause oral cancer. However, the exact mechanism in this reactivation is not fully known. Present paper focuses on interaction between tobacco ingredients with the EBV proteins using In-silico tools. From Protein Data Bank database, the structures were deduced and then docked to check binding affinities. We observed that interaction of nicotine with EBV early proteins rta (BRLF) and zta (BZLF) showed good score of -5.3 and -3.3 respectively while that between nitrosamine and rta and zta proteins, showed score of -2.9 and -2.7 respectively. Normally, the local physiological and innate immune system will resist the tobacco compounds to enter across oral mucosa and epithelial cells to cause further damage to the blood chemistry. However, these scores indicate possibility of translocation of carcinogenic compounds into blood, specifically among tobacco chewers who are infected by EBV. Our studies show that EBV interaction will help evade innate oral immunological resistance and thus infected people who are tobacco eaters will be prone to cancer.

Keywords: BRLF, BZLF, Epstein Barr Virus, Nicotine, Nitrosamine, Oral cancer, Tobacco