With the end of the year approaching, we at EMBO Molecular Medicine decided to make a balance of the journal's first year of existence. 2009 finally saw the journal's first issue and all others that followed, although preparations for launch started already early in 2008. Clinicians and molecular biologists have trusted us with their submissions covering an incredible range of fields and interests in the area of Molecular Medicine. The papers we have published have drawn the attention of many to our website and to the pages of the journal. The impact of the findings we report is being appreciated worldwide and every month the research we publish is broadly covered by a variety of news services. Adding all the ups and some little downs of the year, we come to the conclusion that a great year has passed for the journal! A thank you is in order and it goes not only to our authors, reviewers, editorial board members and senior editors but also to our many readers for the success of our first year!
»A thank you is in order…«
Figure 1 illustrates well the focus of our journal as well as the exciting diversity of our content within this focus. Along with our monthly issues we have also decided to create three Virtual issues on the topics we covered the most this year (these are again patent in Fig 1). The idea started with the ‘Celebrating Stem Cells’ issue and has now expanded to a ‘Cancer’ and a ‘Neurodegeneration’ issues. Do consult these online on our webpage. They are definitely worth it! We will continue to update the Virtual issues as new papers on the topic appear and this way, readers can easily access and appreciate the Reviews and Primary research articles we publish on their fields.
Figure 1.
A word-cloud of 2009's EMBO Molecular Medicine content. The cloud gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the titles of all the 2009 articles published in EMBO Molecular Medicine. The image was generated using Wordle (http://www.wordle.net/) and the monthly tables of contents of the journal were used as the source text.
While our 2009 issues covered many fields, there are areas that remain to be explored in the pages of our journal and that we are eager to cover. If you feel that the subjects close to your heart are not yet properly represented in EMBO Molecular Medicine, then please go ahead and do submit your next paper to our journal. We look forward to reading and hopefully publishing it! It is our ambition to promote the journal as a forum for authors and readers to divulge and learn about stimulating advances in the broad Molecular Medicine field. We seek novel molecular insights into human diseases and knowledge that opens new perspectives for clinical applications.
»…go ahead and do submit your next paper to our journal.«
Thoughts about what this year brought the journal, quickly turn into what did 2009 bring us all? What were the breakthroughs, technological advances, where are changes taking place in the field of Molecular Medicine? Were there concrete developments to fields and diseases that counted mostly on hope so far? The short format of this editorial is unfortunately not suited to go through the year in detail, but certain advances have personally struck us at EMBO Molecular Medicine. The H1N1 pandemic was probably the 2009 medical event that reached and troubled the general public the most. The nature of this virus is yet another proof of the amazing ingenuity of influenza viruses (and of viruses in general) and the swift and global responses with which authorities, clinicians, researchers, citizens and pharma companies responded was (and is) impressive and reassuring.
»…what did 2009 bring us all?«
The stem and iPS cells field continues to explode and this year brought the possibility of creating iPS cells without exogenous genetic alterations to the target cells. Researchers gradually replaced genome-integrating viruses by safer modes of delivering the famous four reprogramming factors and iPS cells can now be generated by delivering recombinant proteins for example. The number of reprogramming factors needed was reduced, the efficiency of the reprogramming process has improved; depending on the target cells, new combinations and protocols are proving effective. These advances solve some of the hurdles and major safety issues holding back the field and move us closer to the application of this technology. Indeed, iPS cells have already been very influential in modelling human Neurological disease this year.
Fields such as Inflammation and Alzheimer's disease also saw a number of breakthroughs throughout 2009. The intricate cellular and molecular mechanisms that mediate inflammation are becoming better-delineated and novel links between Alzheimer's amyloid-beta and cellular receptors or the PrPc prion protein or even the sleep–wake cycle have been disclosed. We will hopefully soon see the translation of these novel findings into the management of Alzheimer or inflammation-related disorders. In the field of cancer therapy, molecules such as PARP or Hedgehog inhibitors are also bringing new hopes for alternative treatments in suitable individuals.
Closer and closer to becoming a reality is the RTS,S malaria vaccine candidate. After the encouraging results of the Phase II clinical trials, a large Phase III trial began in 2009 among African children. The next 2–3 years will tell us whether we can finally start envisaging a world free of this devastating disease.
This ‘2009 in a nutshell’ is certainly not complete and I can only apologize for not highlighting so many other exciting and promising discoveries that happened this past year. Those findings that I omitted here and you are now thinking of, together with the ones we highlighted in the pages of our journal are the confirmation of the enormous impact this field is making in the laboratories, the clinics and on society throughout the globe. Can't wait for 2010!
Biography
