I'm just a layperson and I haven't read the paper, so forgive me if this is naive/basic/plain stupid
My understandning was that EBV lived in B-cells, and B-cell depletion through rituximab would kill EBV present in the body. So why would reprogramming of T-cells be needed? Wouldn't a way to test his theory be to treat with rituximab?
Or is he saying that EBV is harboured elsewhere (not B-cells)?
Or that rituximab doesn't kill off enough B-cells?
(If I understand things correctly the ME patients in the ritux studies who got better did not do so in a way which suggested EBV was the culprit - in the EBV cases, the patient gets really ill for a couple of days after the infusion and then gets dramatically better. ME patients, on the other hand, seemed to have a similar reaction as patients with autoimmune disease where it takes a number of months for autoantibodies to die off.)
@mango