Abstract
Toxicologic Pathology: Nonclinical Safety Assessment is edited by 4 veterinary pathologists with extensive experience in the field. They have assembled 21 chapters written by more than 50 coauthors, many with extensive experience as well. The book is divided up into 2 sections: Concepts in Drug Development and Organ Systems. Each chapter has a table of contents with a detailed chapter structure. Although the editors emphasize drug development, the book is also of value for safety assessment by any chemical or other substance. The organ system chapters generally include sections on embryology, best practices or methods of evaluation, functional anatomy, and nonproliferative and proliferative lesions. The descriptive text for each section can be short or, more commonly, very detailed. Some chapters include mostly pathology details and lesion discussion while others cover interpretations and mechanisms of the findings. Most of the color figures are excellent and lovely but not as numerous as they may have been. Some chapters have few figures. Of course, the INHAND documents will provide a great source of many figures for each organ system. References lists are detailed. I particularly enjoyed reading the “Lymphoid System” by Pat Hailey since it is among my favorite organ systems. His details and insight into each tissue show his enthusiasm for the lymphoid system and immunotoxicologic pathology.
A few negative comments. There are long paragraphs used in several chapters. Editing could have included a better division of the text into more sections. The book does not attempt to cover all laboratory animal species used in safety assessment, and often the species being discussed in the text are not mentioned. Also, many figure legends do not note the species, and there are few summary tables or graphs. These negative findings are minimal compared with the overall content of the text.
I do not want to compare this book with others on the same subject matter since each has distinct advantages for use by readers. This treatise is particularly valuable for its content. I highly recommend this book for pathologists and nonpathologists working in the field of safety assessment and the many other uses of animals in medical research. A real expert reference book.