At CIMM, we have isolated HHV-6 from several patients with a variety of illnesses and also from normal volunteers. They replicate in established T cell lines only and in fresh human cord blood cells. HHV-6 is highly cytolytic for the infected cells. All cells die in 10 to 14 days. Our data indicates that this virus definitely does not transform any cell type nor does it integrate in cellular genome There is plenty of viral DNA present in all areas of the infected cells which can be confusing.

HHV-6 was discovered by our Director of Basic Science research in 1986 while he was associated as senior investigator with the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology, NCI, NIH, in Bethesda, MD. This was published in Science (234:596-601). There have been several publications since greatly expanding this field. Although there are a number of authors listed on the paper a few of them contributed data to strengthen the paper. Dr. Dharam Ablashi has done herpes virus serology all his life. He did serology in this case as well. He had no role in the discovery process. He was not even present in our laboratories at that time. A number of patent documents were written and filed by Zaki Salahuddin which has been allowed by the US Patent office.