The development of a comprehensive vaccine against Neisseria meningitidis, the causative agent of meningococcal disease, has remained elusive because of bacterial diversity and immunologic evasion. In Meningococcal Vaccines: Methods and Protocols, Andrew Pollard and Martin Maiden have assembled an impressive collection of the latest molecular and cellular techniques for the development, evaluation, and implementation of vaccines to be used against this dreaded disease. The contributors-leading scientists, clinicians, and public health physicians-describe in detail the many approaches to vaccine design, as well as the assessment of immune response to vaccine candidates and novel vaccine formulations. They also present as a test case the recent implementation of a new meningococcal vaccine in the United Kingdom. A companion volume, Meningococcal Disease: Methods and Protocols, contains detailed methods for diagnostic microbiology, bacterial characterization, epidemiology, host-pathogen interactions, and clinical studies.
Timely and comprehensive, Meningococcal Vaccines: Methods and Protocols provides the scientist, public health physician, epidemiologist, clinical microbiologist, and clinician with the essential tools to lay bare the secrets of the meningococcus and to develop, evaluate, and implement successful new meningococcal vaccines.