Abstract
While the basic format for the book is the same as that established in the first edition, this second edition, coming some 5 years after the first, has built upon the undoubted success that the first edition enjoyed. Alongside the 4 original editors, the addition of Dr Bouchard adds a more contemporary pharmaceutical experience such that no better grouping of experience and reputation could be brought together to add gravitas to an already excellent text to gather together some of the most widely published authors in the field of toxicologic pathology. For a textbook with the ambition of covering the enormous field of drug development, its value will ultimately be heavily dependent upon the quality of the authors commissioned to write the various chapters. In this, the editors have achieved a truly remarkable feat in pulling together over 70 of the top toxicologic pathologists, the majority of whom are still practicing in their respective fields. As in the first edition, the text is split into a first section, entitled “Concepts in Drug Development,” and containing 10 chapters on general issues relevant to drug development and especially to the role that the toxicologic pathologist has in the process, while the second section is a systematic cover of the main organ systems in 13 chapters. Each of the organ system chapters is organized, as in the first edition, into embryology, functional anatomy, functional tests for toxicity, and descriptions of non-neoplastic and neoplastic pathologies in the respective organ system. Where relevant, the majority of the chapters also place the experimental animal lesions into the context of human relevance.
Each of the respective chapters in both sections has been extensively revised with additional color plates over those present in the first edition and, in addition, there are 3 completely new chapters within the first section, the first on developing advanced therapies such as cell and gene therapies, the second on medical devices, and the third on the role of pathology in the drug discovery process. These 3 new topics were identified as being missing from the first edition, and as with the other chapters, the contributors for these new ones are practitioners with extensive experience on their chosen topic area. While the original concept for this book was to aid practicing toxicologists and pathologists working in the drug discovery and development field, the inclusion of basic toxicologic pathology and the normal histology/physiology of the various organ systems means that this text is equally useful for individuals working in the industrial/agrochemical toxicology fields. While there is still inevitably a style difference between the chapters, the editors have done a fine job in making the transition from chapter to chapter almost imperceptible, with each author producing a highly valuable reference list that greatly enhances the value of the book. While the focus of the textbook is clearly as a desktop (microscope-top?) reference for pathologists, it would be a great omission if other scientists, both regulatory and those involved in basic research, working in toxicology were deterred from reading the book. The book will also find considerable use in government drug regulatory agencies and in academia.
While it is always possible to find deficiencies in texts of this size, maintaining the new edition to a single volume has considerable advantages over multivolume texts and it is this fact that has most probably limited the chapters in the second section to a relatively small number of color plates. Clearly, the topic matter for the chapters in the first section can be adequately covered without the necessity of photographs, but those of the organ systems would be more completely covered by additional photographs. In this respect, the chapter on the reproductive system (Chapter 20) is most extensively illustrated and benefits greatly from this fact.
Although this may be considered as simply the latest text in the field, it also, as did the first edition, fills a gap in the literature for toxicologic pathology and toxicology in an area that largely has been dependent until now on Peter Greaves’ excellent editions of his textbooks on the histopathology of preclinical toxicity studies. Dr Sahota’s book is not a repetition of the Greaves’ texts but is a complementary book that sits alongside its illustrious predecessors but that also covers topics from drug discovery in a much broader sense than simply those aspects that apply to toxicologic histopathology.
This book has much to recommend it to both the experienced toxicologist and toxicologic pathologist and to beginners in the field of drug development. The accumulated knowledge of the contributing authors, much of which has never been published before, makes this a classic that should be in use for many years to come.