Understanding Vaccines and Immune Defense

Focusing on vaccines, this book contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section contains cross-referenced entries.

Easy to follow and medical jargon-friendly, this encyclopedia is a go-to source on vaccines against infectious diseases and against certain cancers accompanied by a comprehensive summary of core foundational concepts that govern human immune defense systems.

Understanding Vaccines and Immune Defense: A Guide for Students, Patients, and Caregivers guides readers through a brief history of how pandemics and epidemics have shaped the development of vaccines which, in turn, have been successful in keeping life-threatening causative agents at bay. Also discussed at length is cancer vaccines, preventive and therapeutic as well as general and personalized in forms and formats, that adds a powerful pillar to cancer immunotherapy. Another fascinating interplay between vaccines and cancer portrayed in this book is how certain anti-infectious disease vaccines can be (surprisingly) repurposed to reset patient immune system and be revved up against certain types of cancer.