In 1977, Takatsuki and co-workers described in Japan a human malignant disease termed adult T-cell leukemia (ATL). Three years later, in 1980, Gallo and colleagues reported the identification of the first human retrovirus, human T-cell leukemia virus type I (HTLV-I), in a patient with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. Contemporaneously, the virus was also isolated by Hinuma, Yoshida and Japanese co-workers.  Subsequently, molecular studies confirmed that HTLV-1 is the etiological agent for ATL and that the virus encodes a 40kDa cell-transforming oncoprotein named Tax (see above inset).  

This website, curated by Ralph Grassmann, Pat Green, Fatah Kashanchi, Kuan-Teh Jeang, Susan Marriott, John Semmes, Luc Willems, aims to collate comprehensively scientific findings related to Tax.