BOOK REVIEWS • CID 2006:43 (1 July) • 119 BOOK REVIEWS Gary P. Wormser, Section Editor Clinical Infectious Diseases 2006; 43:119–20 Permission to reprint a book review in this section may be obtained only from the reviewer. Vaccines: Frontiers in Design and Development Edited by Philippe Moingeon Norfolk, UK: Horizon Bioscience, 2005. 268 pp., illustrated. $180.00 (hardcover). This book is a collection of 14 articles that aims to summarize the state of the art on various important aspects of the field of vaccine development. The collection com- prises several articles that provide broad overviews of the field, emerging technol- ogies, and adverse events. Much of the book addresses newer or emerging tech- nologies, which is refreshing and appro- priate, because other comprehensive text- books already serve as standard references for the vaccine field, such as the text by Plotkin and Orenstein [1] and the text edited by Levine et al. [2]. This book does not try to be comprehensive; rather, it re- views newer approaches and technologies that are less mainstream but are promising for the future. More than one-half of the authors of the articles work in the vaccine industry, and this is reflected by their emphasis on technology and new practical directions for the field of vaccine de- velopment. The book appears to have reproduced the authors’ articles directly with minimal editing for consistency of style; some au- thors are better writers than others. The figures are not extensive and are mostly perfunctory in style (they appear to be a little “home-made”), but they communi- cate their intended points and break up the text a little. A few of the figures are repeated in color at the end of the book. The references are quite extensive and were up to date at the time of publication. The best contributions address specific emerging approaches to vaccination that differ from the most conventional intra- muscular killed or subunit or live, atten- uated mucosal vaccines that dominate the market today. Chapters on innate im- munity and adjuvants, skin route immu- nization, and mucosal adjuvants are in- teresting and thorough. The authors of these chapters make the point that these emerging areas are important and inter- esting and may overcome some of the ob- stacles faced by conventional vaccination strategies. One of the helpful features of this book is that most of the chapters are careful to discuss clinical research of emerging technologies, rather than just preclinical testing. Therefore, although the technology chapters are enthusiastic about emerging technologies, they are also re- alistic, for the most part. The editors of a vaccine book have to decide whether to address specific path- ogens. The dilemma is that a comprehen- sive text covering each human and vet- erinary pathogen becomes quite large. The editor chose to include 3 pathogen-spe- cific chapters on rotavirus, papillomavirus, and tuberculosis. It is not entirely clear why only these 3 pathogens were chosen, although there is new, recent activity in these fields that is of interest. In fact, the efficacy of a papillomavirus vaccine and 2 live rotavirus vaccines was recently proven, thereby confirming the need for current updates, but also dating the chapters some. It seems a little remiss for any book on new vaccines to not touch on HIV vac- cine development. Admittedly, very few experimental HIV vaccines have shown significant progress to date; however, ex- perimental HIV vaccine trials have had the greatest impact in pushing new vectors, adjuvants, and technologies into human trials, compared with trials in any other field. Influenza vaccines also are driving a lot of innovation in the field of vaccine design, and a discussion of these vaccines is missing. The book is appropriate for students or graduate students in the fields of micro- biology and immunology or public health science. Because of the reasonable size of the book, one could easily get through the book during a course, or even during a focused 2-day period of study. The book will not serve as a comprehensive reference text, but rather, as a summary of the cur- rent state of some interesting consider- ations and emerging technologies in the vaccine sciences. Acknowledgments Potential conflicts of interest. J.E.C.: no conflicts. James E. Crowe, Jr. Vanderbilt Program in Vaccine Sciences, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee References 1. Plotkin SA, Orenstein WA. Vaccines. 4th ed. Philadelphia: WB Saunders, 2004. 2. Levine MM, Kaper JB, Rappuoli R, Liu MA, Good MF, eds. New generation vaccines. 3rd ed. New York: Marcel Dekker, 2004. Tick-Borne Diseases of Humans Edited by Jesse L. Goodman, David T. Dennis, and Daniel E. Sonenshine Washington, DC: American Society for Microbiology Press, 2005. 401 pp. $119.95 (cloth). Tick-Borne Diseases of Humans, edited by Jesse Goodman, David Dennis, and Daniel Sonenshine, is a multi-authored text that tries to and largely succeeds in providing an in-depth review of the subject. The ex- press aim of the book is to address both the disease and the vector. To accomplish this, the editors have assembled a distin- guished group of contributors, each of Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cid/article-abstract/43/1/119/308443 by guest on 30 May 2020