Letter from the Editor 2020: Annual Summary and Introduction of the Thematic Issue and Guest Editor

This year’s thematic is the seventeenth Immunological Investigations’ thematic issue, and is entitled, “Micro and Nanoparticles in Immune Modulation“. This topic was suggested by the editorial board last year. Applications using nano and microparticles occur in many medical fields and it is important to review how these particles affect the innate and the acquired immune system. The elegance of these systems intrigues both novice and experienced scientists, and attempts to modulate the immune system, either by up or downregulating it, can cause changes in many important aspects. Thus, in this issue, we focused on Micro and Nanoparticles in Immune Modulation. Like the effects and uses of nano and microparticles, this thematic is broad in scope.

This thematic is a collection of articles on micro and nanoparticles that includes “Particulate matter, asian sand dust delays cyclophosphamide-induced type 1 diabetes in NOD mice” (Morita et al. 2019), “Bovine milk exosomes affect proliferation and protect macrophages against cisplatin-induced cytotoxicity” (Matic et al. 2020), “Exosomes represent an immune suppressive T cell checkpoint in human chronic inflammatory microenvironments” (Shenoy et al. 2020), “Immunosuppressive effect of “melanoma-derived exosomes on NY-ESO-1 antigen-specific human CD8 + T cells is dependent on IL-10 and independent of BRAF^V600E mutation in melanoma cell lines” (Shu et al. 2020), Vaccine efficacy induced by 2009 pandemic H1N1 virus-like particles differs from that induced by split influenza virus” (Lee et al. 2019), “Metal nanoparticles in infection and immunity” (Crane 2020), “Microspheres encapsulating immunotherapy agents target the tumor-draining lymph node in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma” (Han et al. 2020), “Cytokine-encapsulated biodegradable microspheres for immune therapy” (Egilmez 2020), “Design and öptimization of PLGA particles to deliver immunomodulatory drugs for the prevention of skin allograft rejection” (Shahzad et al. 2019), “Biological function and immunotherapy utilizing phosphatidylserine-based nanoparticles” (Glassman et al. 2020) and “Mesenchymal stem cell-derived extracellular vesicles: a novel cell-free therapy” (Jafarinia et al. 2020).

Several Immunological Investigation articles in the past 3 years have focused on the use on nanoparticles or microparticles in immunomodulation or as tools for immunologists, and these included “Poly lactic-co-glycolic acid nanoparticles containing human gastric tumor lysates as antigen delivery vehicles for dendritic cell-based antitumor immunotherapy” (Kohnepoushi et al. 2019), “Ïmmune correlates of protection induced by virus-like particles containing 2009 H1N1 pandemic influenza HA, NA or M1 proteins, immunological investigations” (Moon et al. 2019), “A “novel PspA protein vaccine intranasal delivered by bacterium-like particles provides broad protection against pneumococcal pneumonia in mice, immunological investigations” (Wang et al. 2018), and “Immunomodulatory activities of curcumin-stabilized silver nanoparticles: efficacy as an antiretroviral therapeutic” (Sharma et al. 2017).

Gautam Shenoy (Orchid id 0000–0001-6906-8589) is a member of the Immunological Investigations editorial board and is our guest editor for this thematic issue. He was the reviewer of the year last year for Immunological Investigations, reviewing seven articles thoroughly and with a prompt turn-around time. He is a research scientist in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo. He received his PhD from the National Institute of Immunology in New Delhi, India in 2010. He then moved to the USA as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Maryland, before joining the University at Buffalo to pursue his passion for translational research in immunology. Dr Shenoy’s research interests are in the regulation of adaptive immune responses in health and disease, with focus on tumor immunology and cancer immunotherapy. He has recently led studies that have established exosomes as a targetable immune checkpoint in tumors and chronic inflammatory microenvironments. He has also developed patient-derived xenograft models for different types of cancer to evaluate immunotherapies. These scientific contributions have led to multiple research articles published in well-known journals, as well as invited talks in scientific conferences and symposia across the country. Additionally, he is committed to actively contributing to the scientific community; he has taught graduate courses and has acted as a reviewer for 10 different journals.

The impact factor of Immunological Investigations is now 2.515. If the current submission rate continues as it has so far, we will reach 424 submissions for the year surpassing the number received last year (285), and exceeding 1 a day. With the increasing wave of e-mails from predatory journals asking for submissions this is an impressive increase in submissions. The website containing a list of predatory journals is still available at https://predatoryjournals.com/journals/. Immunological Investigations have no page charges, online color is free, and if US government funding was received for the research, open access is also without charge. The average time from submission to publication has decreased to 27 days.

Immunological Investigations received 23,926 article downloads in 2019, which is 21% higher than downloads received in 2018. The top 10 most downloaded articles are listed here, with the most downloaded article with 2241 downloads is “Thyroglobulin antibodies are associated with symptom burden in patients with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis: a cross-sectional study“ (Baric et al. 2019). Next are Inflammaging (Kirkwood 2018), with 1176 downloads, “Devil facial tumours: towards a vaccine” (Owen and Siddle 2019), “Prognostic values of CD38+ CD101+ PD1+ CD8 + T cells in pancreatic cancer” (Zhang et al. 2019), “Immunomodulation mechanisms in disease and in the surgical patient” (Nader 2017), Introduction (Robert 2019), “The impact of the microbiome on immunosenescence” (Amsterdam and Ostrov 2018), “Immunomodulating and immunoresistance properties of cancer-initiating cells: implications for the clinical success of immunotherapy” (Maccalli et al. 2017), “Evaluation and characteristics of immunological adjuvant activity of purified fraction of Albizia julibrissin saponins” (Zhu et al. 2019) and TIGIT, “A novel therapeutic target for tumor immunotherapy”” (Liu et al. 2017). “Devil facial tumours: towards a vaccine” (Owen and Siddle 2019) is the top Altmetric scoring article with a score of 17.

The 10 most cited articles in 2020 were as follows: “Dexamethasone attenuates LPS-induced acute lung injury through inhibition of NF kappa B, COX 2, and pro-inflammatory mediators” (Al-Harbi et al. 2016), Cancer/testis antigens: expression, regulation, tumor invasion, and use in immunotherapy of cancers (Salmaninejad et al. 2016), “Short chain fatty acids regulate cytokines and Th17/Treg cells in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells in vitro” (Asarat et al. 2016), “Immunomodulating and immunoresistance properties of cancer initiating cells: implications for the clinical success of immunotherapy” (Maccalli et al. 2017), “Identification, isolation, and functional assay of regulatory T cells” (Azimi et al. 2016), “c-Rel is required for the induction of pTregs in the eye but not in the gut mucosa” (Wang et al. 2016), “Novel mutation of ZAP 70 related combined immunodeficiency: first case from the “national Iranian registry and review of the literature” (Shirkani et al. 2017), “Suppression of MAPKs/NF beta B Activation induces intestinal anti inflammatory action of ginsenoside Rf in HT 29 and RAW264.7 cells” (Ahn et al. 2016), “MicroRNAs in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, altered microRNA expression and immunosuppressive cytokine production by regulatory T cells of ulcerative colitis patients” (Mohammadnia-Afrouzi et al. 2016).

As always, I would like to thank the editorial board and the associate editor of Immunological Investigations, Dr Ernesto De Nardin for helping with this journal. Thank you also to the many kind reviewers that have answered our need for thorough and thoughtful reviews especially in this time of the pandemic. I would like to thank the reviewer of the year, Dr Nader Nader for reviewing seven articles last year. Editorial board members Drs Barbara Ostrov, Scott Gerber, and John Crane all reviewed six articles each, and I would like to thank them as well. To all the readers, thank you for your interest and if you are asked to review, if you have time, please answer affirmatively and if you are busy, please refer the services of those you know! This is my last year as editor, and I would also like to thank all the authors as well as the personnel at Taylor and Francis for their contributions to the past 17 years I have enjoyed as editor.