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Clinical Associate Professor, College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL
Published Online, May 16, 2005. www.theannals.com, DOI 10.1345/aph.1G045
Audience: The editor intends that the text will be useful for experts in the field of programmed cell death, or apoptosis, as well as for beginners. The intended audience is composed of cancer biologists, immunologists, developmental biologists, medical oncologists, hematologists, radiation therapists, rheumatologists, and those in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. Thus, it is expected that the book will be useful for clinicians as well as basic scientists. Pharmacists are not specifically named in the preface—pharmacists whose interests, teaching, or laboratory work emphasize anticancer drug mechanisms and molecular pharmacology will find the book particularly interesting and informative.
Content: The first chapter describes mammalian cell death pathways. Each subsequent chapter builds upon this, reviewing and expanding one or more concepts from the first chapter, to discuss related concepts and, in particular, implications for cancer therapy. The chapters are well written and extensively referenced. Important concepts include the implications of changes in apoptotic pathways for the development of cancer and mechanisms of resistance to cancer therapy.
Highlights: Because the chapters review and reiterate basic concepts (basic to the understanding of apoptosis, that is; certainly not basic in the sense of easy to learn!), many can be used on their own, without having to read all of the preceding chapters. This will make the book a useful tool to which one can refer to when reading about the molecular mechanism of a new (or old) drug. The book has excellent figures that complement the text and that would be helpful in developing explanations for students.
Limitations: Several of the chapters begin with summaries that might be better labeled as abstracts or placed at the end of the chapters. For the beginner, the summary is much more meaningful after the chapter has been read and may be quite intimidating at the outset—even discouraging the reader from tackling the chapter in the first place!
Summary: Overall, this is an excellent text. Although I think the interested pharmacy audience may be somewhat limited, those who choose to read it should find it most informative and a valuable resource.
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