This book highlights key findings generated during the past years from the main disciplines that constitute Physical Virology, from theoretical physics and simulations to material sciences and vaccines development to structural biology. Each chapter is written by world-class scientists from these areas and is a comprehensive review of where this field stands, as well as the future of Physical Virology. The diversity in the formal training of these scientists results in solving common problems using very distinct approaches, which can produce surprising findings. The multi- and interdisciplinary nature of this field has created a remarkable community that aims at understanding how viruses work and how they can be used in material sciences, chemistry, and biomedicine. Furthermore, the development of Physical Virology has resulted in technological advances that have shaped other fields; for example, it would be impossible to think about the development of Cryo-EM to solve the structure of complex viruses with atomic resolution without the contribution of scientists that created the field of Physical Virology. In the past decade, there has been a great success in the generation of viral systems that can encapsulate drugs, non-viral genetic material, or nanoparticles, as well as in the chemical and genetical modification of virions. Without any doubt in the immediate future, some of these technologies will jump from the bench to the market, creating a revolution in translational and biomedical sciences. The book provides key perspectives for the field, derived from expert´s opinions.

This book reviews the knowledge, methods and available techniques in the rapidly advancing field of virus based vaccines and gene therapeutics. It also highlights new innovative tools and interdisciplinary techniques for bioprocess development and analytics of viruses and viral vectors. As such, it provides a timely and highly relevant resource, since current advances in pharmaceutical research have seen the rise of vaccines and advanced therapeutics and medicinal products (ATMPs), that rely on the power of viruses. However, developing bioprocesses and analytics required to create this often called “magic bullet” (i.e. gene therapy) remains an extremely challenging and costly task. This book offers strategies for overcoming hurdles and difficulties within in all the necessary steps of viral vector development - from scalability to purification methods and quality control.

How a mysterious, super-powerful—yet long-neglected—microbe rules our world and can rescue our health in the age of antibiotic resistance.

The first volume of the book-Emerging Human Viral diseases presents pathogenesis, diagnostics, and therapeutic strategies against viral respiratory and hemorrhagic fever diseases. The initial chapter discusses the underlying factors contributing to the emergence of these viral diseases. The subsequent chapters introduce structure, composition, and organization of viral genomes, and provide insight into function of important viral proteins. It also discusses the host factors that influence the outcome of viral infection and host immune response to the infections caused by these viruses. The book also discusses clinical manifestation and strategies for the prevention of virus diseases and highlights the recent technical advances in the diagnosis of virus diseases, prevention, and control strategies for viral infections.

Cities and countries engulfed by panic and death, desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring. This is what the world has just gone through with Covid-19. But as Simon Schama shows in his epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science, it has happened before.

The aim of the book was to produce the most comprehensive examination of a pandemic that has ever been attempted. By cataloging the full extent of the Zika pandemic, this book will be the most complete history and epistemic contextualization ever attempted to date. The work should function as the primary source for students, researchers, and scholars who need information about the Zika pandemic.