Dear Reader,
In this issue of HV&I, we are delighted to thank all the scientists who reviewed articles for HV&I during 2014 (p,). We are grateful for all this work, which enhances the quality of our publications.
We also are pleased to announce our annual Reviewer of the Year. The top reviewer of 2014 is Dr. Simonetta Viviani (p.).
We present four research papers and three commentaries on HPV: the effect of parent health message intervention on vaccination in adolescents (Rickert, p. 315), correlates of parents’ decision to vaccinate their daughters (Krawczyk, p. 322 and p. 330) and a comparison of kits for assessing immunogenicity (Kemp, p. 337); the commentaries deal with promotion of vaccination in pre-teenagers (Cates, p. 347), sampling of HPV DNA in urine (Vorsters, p. 350) and vaccination against cutaneous papillomaviruses (Vinzón, p. 353).
The Influenza section contains five research papers: immunogenicity and safety study of MF59®-adjuvanted A/H1N1 vaccine for children (Knuf, p. 358), analysis of ISCOMATRIX-adjuvanted pulmonary vaccination (Timothy, p. 376), response to trivalent influenza vaccination in 2010-12 seasons (Hiroi, p. 385), impact of HIV infection on the influenza vaccine response (Berger, p. 390), and a preclinical study of nucleoprotein-based vaccine (Zheng, p. 396). The Hepatitis B section brings a case report of a vaccine-escape mutant (Ye, p).
We regularly publish reviews of new products by leading experts. In this issue, you will find a review of the Japanese encephalitis virus vaccine IXIARO® (Firbas, p. 410).
Other Licensed Vaccines and their applications are under scientific scrutiny as well. Here we include antigenic composition analysis of co-purified acellular pertussis vaccines (Xu, p. 420), immunogenicity and safety studies of purified chick embryo cell rabies vaccine (Mahendra, p. 427, and Li, p. 434) and varicella vaccine (Mitra, p. 442), and a characterization of in vitro response to BCG Moreau (Ponte, p. 449).
We introduce a Passive Immunization study on anti-cocaine MAb (Kirley, p) as well as Novel Vaccines and Technologies in articles on novel recombinant botulinum neurotoxin vaccine (Yu, p. 467), Dengue vaccine (Chawla, p. 473), and aluminum hydroxide-based adjuvants (He, p. 476).
We present a research article in response to five immunogenic pneumococcal proteins in children (Ren, p. 488), a perspective on adult immunization (Tan, p, and Verma, p), and a pre-clinical study of Newcastle disease virus-delivered HIV-1 vaccine (Khattar, p. 503).
The Immunotherapy section contains a report on the effect of IL-2 on bone marrow-derived dendritic cells (Hu, p. 515) and a commentary on the emerging tolerogenic vaccines (Geng, p). In addition, we present a characterization of a novel Rotavirus strain for inactivated vaccine (Velasquez, p. 530).
In our monthly News, Policy and Profiles (NP&P) track we offer a selection of the latest news in the field of vaccines and immunotherapeutics. In this section we also regularly publish opinion pieces on timely, interesting, and controversial topics related to vaccines and immunotherapeutics, profiles of companies and organizations, as well as portraits of distinguished scientists in our field. Please contact Acquisitions Editor Adam Weiss ([email protected]) with your ideas for commentaries, opinion pieces, profiles and portraits. Your suggestions for and contributions to our N&P&P track are always welcome!
Sincerely,
Ronald Ellis, PhD
Editor-in-Chief
Adam Weiss
Acquisitions Editor