504 Cell Biology International Reports, Vol. 12, No. 6, June 1988

Soviet Medical Reviews Section D Immunology Reviews Volume 1. EDITED by R.V. Petrov. Published by Harwood Academic Publishers.

The aim of this review is to make available the recent work of some Soviet laboratories to non-Russian speaking Immunologists. The book is divided into three main sections, the first of which deals with the regulatory role of lymphocytes in haemopoiesis, the second with the regulatory role of bone marrow in lymphocyte responses and the last section with the development of synthetic vaccines.

In general the data are well presented and the figures clear. However, the data is not presented in the context of recent ad- vances in the USA, Britain and Europe. Most of the references cited are from publication several years ago, this is true of those by soviet authors as well as others. The nomenclature used for T and B cells in the first section of the book is out of date and no attempt has been made to define the terms in many cases. This makes some of the text difficult to interpret.

The central section describes some interesting data on soluble mediators produced by bone marrow which have a stimulatory effect on both T and B cells. These mediators have been quite well characterised functionally and biochemically. (They appear to act independently of the MHC and even across species barriers.)

The final section on vaccination introduces some ideas of methods of avoiding the genetic control of T cell responses to certain antigens. However this is not discussed in reference to the recent work of Townsend et. al. in this country.

The book generally fulfils its objective of bringing recent Soviet advances to the attention of a much wider audience and is useful in this sense, however its value is diminished by the limited nature of the discussions and the failure to put the results in the context of recent advances in the field.

Dr. M.R. Newton