Dear reader,
This issue of Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics starts with an in-memoriam Portrait of Dr. Holbrook Kohrt (p 2486), whose outstanding career in immunotherapy research came to a stop with his untimely passing earlier this year, and with a Profile of OncoSec biotech company (p 2488).
The Immunotherapy section presents two reviews on bispecific antibodies in cancer treatment (Chen, p 2491) and advances in melanoma immunotherapy (Dany, p 2501), a research article investigating the mechanism of cimetidine-induced Treg suppression (Zhang, p 2512), and three commentaries on combination immunotherapy of OX40 agonist plus CTLA-4 blockade (Redmond, p 2519), dendritic cell vaccination in melanoma (Boudewijns, p 2523) and Hsp70-targeting immunotherapy (Guzhova, p 2529).
We introduce four articles on Licensed Vaccines: an estimate of pertussis incidence in Americans younger than 50 years (Chen, p 2536), a review of infections following parenteral vaccination and the relation to skin disinfection (Cook, p 2546), analysis of comparative immune persistence after single-dose vaccination with MAV or Oka strains of varicella zoster vaccine in Korean children (Choi, p 2560), and a study of potential mycobacterial transmission from vaccinated mothers to infants (Markova, p 2565).
Three articles on Rotavirus include an analysis of vaccine effectiveness in young children according to socioeconomic status (Gosselin, p 2572), a review of post-vaccination intussusception and recommendation for future research and surveillance (Yen, p 2580), and a report on safety surveillance conducted in Korea after vaccine introduction (Shin, p 2590).
The Hepatitis section contains a comparison of immune response and persistence following immunization of children with two inactivated hepatitis A vaccines (Yu, p 2595), a review on the epidemiology of and vaccination against hepatitis E (Wu, p 2603), and an assessment of impact of the recent crisis of confidence in hepatitis B vaccination in China (Yue, p 2611).
The Influenza section presents a product review on Fluzone intradermal vaccine (Bragazzi, p 2616), and two research articles on promotion of vaccination among Italian healthcare workers (Conte, p 2628) and the comparative safety and immunogenicity of three vaccines in the Chinese military (Gao, p 2634).
We present two articles on Novel Vaccines, including a review of development of vaccines against antigenically variable pathogens (Servín-Blanco, p 2640) and a brief report on a novel multivalent tuberculosis vaccine (Griffiths, p 2649), a study of the role of mobile technologies in improving timely vaccine Acceptance (Atkinson, p 2654), and a report on the establishment of a network for the reporting of adverse events following HPV vaccination in Australia (Crawford, p 2662).
Four Pneumococcus-related articles discuss PCV cost-effectiveness in older adults (Newall, p 2666), the need to consider age groups other than children as carriers of pneumococci (Slotved, p 2670), and the cost-effectiveness of infant vaccination in Malaysia and Hong Kong (Varghese, p 2675) with a response Letter (Wu, p 2681). A commentary discusses the limited enforcement prospects of product-by-process Patents (Chang, p 2685).
We are delighted to present a special section based on the 26th National Immunisation Conference in Manchester UK that took place in December 2015. This section contains seven articles (2690, 2694, 2700, 2704, 2707, 2709, 2712) that were presented at the meeting, and you can learn more about them in the Editorial by Drs. Martin Guppy and David Baxter (p 2688).
Our monthly News, Policy and Profiles (NP&P) track offers 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