This book is the first to provide both a broad overview of the current methodologies being applied to drug design and in-depth analyses of progress in specific fields. It details state-of-the-art approaches to pharmaceutical development currently used by some of the world's foremost laboratories. The book features contributors from a variety of fields, new techniques, previously unpublished data, and extensive reference lists.

This book exploits an understanding of disease pathogenesis by applying a variety of biological agents to therapy. It provides a broad overview of the current methodologies being applied to biological approaches to rational drug design and in depth analyses of progress in this specific field.

This book is the first to provide both a broad overview of the current methodologies being applied to drug design and in-depth analyses of progress in specific fields. It details state-of-the-art approaches to pharmaceutical development currently used by some of the world's foremost laboratories. The book features contributors from a variety of fields, new techniques, previously unpublished data, and extensive reference lists.

Inaugurates a series for scientists and clinicians on the application of recent biotechnological methods in experimental and clinical medicine. Focuses on the design, synthesis, and utilization of biologically active peptides (short strings of amino acids not large enough to warrant the term protein

Investigation into basic and advanced peptide design, synthesis, evaluation and utilization. New therapeutic approaches from experimental systems.

Genetic / DNA immunization represents a novel approach to vaccine and immune therapeutic development. The direct injec tion of nucleic acid expression cassettes into a living host results in a limited number of its cells becoming factories for production of the introduced gene products. This host-inappropriate gene expression has important immunological consequences, resulting in the specific immune activation of the host against the gene delivered antigen. The recent demonstration by a number of laboratories that the induced immune responses are functional in experimental models against both specific infectious diseases and cancers is likely to have dramatic consequences for the develop ment of a new generation of experimental vaccines and immune therapies. This technology has the potential to enable the pro duction of vaccines and immune-based therapies that are not only effective immunologically but are accessible to the entire world (rather than just to the most developed nations). Vaccine Development Vaccination against pathogenic microorganisms represents one of the most important advances in the history of medicine. Vaccines, including those against polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, pertussis and other diseases, have dramatically improved and protected more human lives than any other avenue of modern medicine. The vaccine against smallpox, for example, has been so successful that it is now widely believed that this malicious killer, responsible for more deaths in the twentieth century than World Wars I and II combined, has been removed from the face of the earth.