Chemotherapy Of Fungal Diseases

Fungal diseases have been with us from antiquity; interest in the chemo therapy of fungal disease has exploded in the past decade. To plan and pro duce a book on the topic of antifungal chemotherapy has come as a personal challenge - and something of an eye-opener - towards the end of my re search career. A landmark publication which still merits reading is Antifungal Chemotherapy (John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK), edited by David Speller, which appeared in 1980. However, the fact that ketoconazole, the first of the modern, orally active, wide-spectrum antifungals, attracted no more than two sentences in it indicates just how far we have come in the 1980s. A steady stream of original papers and a number of conference proceedings have chronicled this progress in drug research; outstanding among the latter are the proceedings of an international telesymposium, entitled Recent Trends in the Discovery, Development and Evaluation of Antifungal Agents, edited by Robert Fromtling (J.R. Prous, Barcelona, 1987) and volume 544 of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, entitled Antifungal Drugs, edited by Vassil St. Georgiev, and containing papers and posters presented at a most enjoyable 3-day conference held at Garden City, New York, in the autumn of 1987.

Fungal diseases have been with us from antiquity; interest in the chemo therapy of fungal disease has exploded in the past decade. To plan and pro duce a book on the topic of antifungal chemotherapy has come as a personal challenge - and something of an eye-opener - towards the end of my re search career. A landmark publication which still merits reading is Antifungal Chemotherapy (John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK), edited by David Speller, which appeared in 1980. However, the fact that ketoconazole, the first of the modern, orally active, wide-spectrum antifungals, attracted no more than two sentences in it indicates just how far we have come in the 1980s. A steady stream of original papers and a number of conference proceedings have chronicled this progress in drug research; outstanding among the latter are the proceedings of an international telesymposium, entitled Recent Trends in the Discovery, Development and Evaluation of Antifungal Agents, edited by Robert Fromtling (J.R. Prous, Barcelona, 1987) and volume 544 of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, entitled Antifungal Drugs, edited by Vassil St. Georgiev, and containing papers and posters presented at a most enjoyable 3-day conference held at Garden City, New York, in the autumn of 1987.

This second volume of PDR SPECIAL TOPICS contains five review articles, covering nearly the entire field of fungal diseases in humans as well as therapeutic approaches. The main emphasis of the book lies in antifungal therapy: the most relevant information on the present state of the art of antifungal chemotherapy for dermatomycoses, subcutaneous and invasive mycoses is summarized, and open questions and unsolved problems are presented. The book is ideal for both the practitioner as well as advanced student.

The International Society of Chemotherapy meets every two years to review progress in chemotherapy of infections and of malignant disease. Each meeting gets larger to encompass the extension of chemotherapy into new areas. In some instances, expansion has been rapid, for example in cephalosporins, pen icillins and combination chemotherapy of cancer - in others slow, as in the field of parasitology. New problems of resistance and untoward effects arise; reduction of host toxicity without loss of antitumour activity by new substances occupies wide attention. The improved results with cancer chemotherapy, es pecially in leukaemias, are leading to a greater prevalence of severe infection in patients so treated, pharmacokinetics of drugs in normal and diseased subjects is receiving increasing attention along with related problems of bioavailability and interactions between drugs. Meanwhile the attack on some of the major bacterial infections, such as gonorrhoea and tubercu losis, which were among the first infections to feel the impact of chemotherapy, still continue to be major world problems and are now under attack with new agents and new methods. From this wide field and the 1,000 papers read at the Congress we have produced Proceedings which reflect the variety and vigour of research in this important field of medicine. It was not possible to include all of the papers presented at the Congress but we have attempted to include most aspects of cur rent progress in chemotherapy.

Reviews research on the chemotherapy of fungal diseases, which has progressed at a much slower rate than that against bacterial diseases. Emphasizes the search during the past decade for selective targets of therapeutic agents, selection being the main difficulty because of the eukaryotic nature of fungi. In addition to several novel drugs, considers structures, processes, and proteins as potential targets; and new approaches such as antifungal agents from plants, and genetic methods of drug discovery. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR