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The threat constituted by the multiple outbreaks of avian influenza during the last few years is urgently calling for the development of new influenza vaccines. Fortunately, a quantum leap in technology has revolutionized the study of influenza and the engineering of new vaccine strains by reverse genetics. This volume provides a historical background and state-of-the-art information about the recent advances in the biology of influenza and the design of new influenza vaccines.
List of contents
Influenza virus: The biology of a changing virus.- Influenza vaccines have a short but illustrious history.- The epidemiology of influenza and its control.- Influenza and influenza vaccination in children.- The immune response to influenza A viruses.- Correlates of protection against influenza.- The role of animal models in influenza vaccine research.- Live attenuated influenza vaccine.- MF59: A safe and potent oil in water emulsion adjuvant for influenza vaccines, which induces enhanced protection against virus challenge.- Non-recent history of influenza pandemics, vaccines and adjuvants.- Waiting for a pandemic.- Modeling influenza pandemic and interventions.
Summary
The emergence of H5N1 avian influenza in 1997 and of the influenza A H1N1 of swine origin in 2009 calls for new, rapid and sustainable solutions for both seasonal and pandemic influenza viruses. During the last ten years, science and technology have made enormous progress, and we are now able to monitor in real time the genetics of viruses while they spread globally, to make more powerful vaccines using novel adjuvants, and to generate viruses in the laboratory using reverse genetics. This volume not only provides state-of-the-art information on the biology of influenza viruses and on influenza vaccines, but is also designed to be a resource to face the present H1N1 pandemic and to plan for long-term global and sustainable solutions.
Additional text
From the reviews of the second edition:
“What the book delivered was a curious juxtaposition of historical perspective alongside a modern commercial approach: from what went wrong in the swine flu vaccination incident of 1976 in the USA, to which companies are using M2 protein conjugates. … This type of information is quite hard to glean from the academic literature. It was also great to get solid information about the state of the art today … . Overall there is some useful detail in this book that is hard to get elsewhere.” (Wendy Barclay, Microbiology Today, May, 2011)
Report
From the reviews of the second edition:
"What the book delivered was a curious juxtaposition of historical perspective alongside a modern commercial approach: from what went wrong in the swine flu vaccination incident of 1976 in the USA, to which companies are using M2 protein conjugates. ... This type of information is quite hard to glean from the academic literature. It was also great to get solid information about the state of the art today ... . Overall there is some useful detail in this book that is hard to get elsewhere." (Wendy Barclay, Microbiology Today, May, 2011)
