William B. Pratt – författare

This is a thorough updating of a classic text that has been published in three editions since Pratt's Chemotherapy of Infection (OUP, 1973). Its treatment of the mechanisms of action, pharmacology and adverse effects of the drugs used to treat bacterial, fungal, parasitic and viral infections has been greatly expanded, and this edition includes two completely new chapters on the fluoroquinolones and the drugs used to treat AIDS.

This text offers an up-to-date review of the field of cancer chemotherapy, including some of the new approaches to biological treatments of cancer and potential targets for new drug design. A detailed description of the pharmacology, mechanisms of action, toxicity, resistance mechanisms, and clinical usefulness of each class of drugs is given. The authors emphasize concepts involved in determining the mechanism of action and development of resistance, the determinants of drug responsiveness to chemotherapeutic agents, and a rationale for their clinical use in various types of cancer. The text is organized in a way that makes it easy for the reader to conceptualize how drugs work and categorize them by their mechanism of action. It facilitates an understanding of the rationale for chemotherapy with respect to the biology of the cancer cell and to tumor growth kinetics. It is extensively referenced and provides a historical background for the development of each class of drugs. The authors draw on the fields of medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, and clinical medicine in writing this text.