There remains great controversy as to whether mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV), the etiological agent of mammary cancer in mice, or a closely related human retrovirus, plays a role in the development of breast cancer in humans. On one hand, retroviruses such as human T-cell lymphotropic virus and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are known causative agents of cancer (in the case of HIV, albeit, indirectly), but attempts to associate other retroviruses with human cancers have been difficult. A recent, high profile, example has been the postulated involvement of another mouse virus, xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, in human prostate cancer, which is now thought to be due to contamination. Here, we review some of the more recent evidence for and against the involvement of MMTV in human breast cancer and suggest future studies that may allow a definitive answer to this conundrum.Mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV) is the etiological agent of mammary cancer in mice, 1,2 and it has long been postulated that this or a similar, MMTV-related, retrovirus is involved in breast cancer in humans. However, this remains controversial. [3][4][5][6] Indeed, this controversy was one of the reasons for a meeting held in Pisa, Italy organized by Generoso Bevilacqua and his colleagues entitled "viruses and breast cancer" last year. Although retroviruses such as human T-cell lymphotropic virus (HTLV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are known to be directly or indirectly involved in the causation of cancer, the association of other retroviruses with human cancers has been fraught with difficulties, the most notable and recent of which has been the evidence for xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) being associated with prostate cancer, where now the evidence seems to be explainable by the use of contaminated cell's DNA and even contaminated commercially available reagents. 7 The resurgence of interest in a potential role of MMTV in human breast cancer over the last 15 years has been driven by consistent reports that sequences highly homologous to MMTV can be found in up to 40% of human breast cancers, and this data have recently been summarized 8 with some groups even referring to the virus from human tumorderived cells and tissue as HMTV rather than MMTV. Moreover, virus protein expression has been reportedly detected in ten primary cultures of human breast cancer containing MMTV sequences, 9 a putative virus has been isolated and the virus cDNA partially sequenced. 10 MMTV has been shown to be able to infect human cells, 11 where it can randomly integrate its genomic information into the genome of the infected cell, a characteristic step in the retrovirus life cycle, 12 as well as produce infectious progeny capable of spreading. 13 These bona fide integrated proviruses can be detected and isolated from 298 unique integration sites isolated from infected human cells and the integrated proviruses are flanked by a duplicated, five base pair sequence, which is characteristic of MMTV. Moreover, the fla...