New Generation Vaccines, 3rd Edition

This volume is a comprehensive, multiauthored, 90-chapter text that summarizes recent advances in the field of vaccinology. The title of the book does not do justice to its scope. It is much more than a description of the new vaccines developed since the previous edition, which was published in 1997. Forty percent of the book is devoted to general topics that establish a socioeconomic context for vaccine development (i.e., issues such as ethical considerations of the conduct of vaccine trials in developing countries, vaccine economics, regulatory issues, and implementation and eradication strategies), and the basic scientific discoveries that have fostered the acceleration and broadening of vaccine development. The quickening pace and scope of stunning scientific advances have facilitated the creation of a new generation of specific vaccines, combined vaccines, sequential prime-boost vaccines, improved adjuvants, viral and bacterial vaccine vectors, and novel delivery systems that use a variety of genetic techniques to manipulate the antigen presentation or the host immunologic response. Particularly helpful in these introductory sections are the overview chapters (J. B. Kaper and R. Rappuoli’s “An Overview of Biotechnology in Vaccine Development” and M. B. Sztein’s “Recent Advances in Immunology that Impact Vaccine Development”). The 50 chapters that deal with vaccines for specific diseases are organized into 3 groups. The first group describes new and improved vaccines for use against diseases for which licensed vaccines already exist. This group includes the polysaccharide conjugate vaccines (against meningococcal, Haemophilus influenza, pneumococcal, and enteric bacterial pathogens), as well as new approaches to immunization for influenza, tuberculosis, arboviruses, and cholera. Somewhat surprisingly, there is no chapter on pertussis, although many variations of the acellular vaccine have been developed and are being considered