Letter to the Editorial Board

Abstract

Dear Editorial Board members:

I am writing to encourage submissions for several categories of interest to the readers of Cancer Biology & Therapy, including Meeting Reports, Bedside-to-Bench Reports, Research Philosophy and original research articles. Samples of Meeting Reports and Bedside-to-Bench Reports from previous issues of CB&T can be downloaded from the journal web site. Author guidelines and other information is also available at the journal web site:

http://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/cbt/

As you know one of our goals is to promote translational research and to bring to the forefront progress in understanding molecular pathogenesis or drug development and to put that in context of clinical care of cancer patients. The Meeting Reports, and I know many of you are trekking all over the globe to various meetings, are a great way to disseminate new and relevant information to the broad topics of interest for the readers of CB&T. Feel free to include photos of the places and participants, as well as the exciting science. Feel free to invite your colleagues at meetings to put together meeting reports and send them to Cancer Biology & Therapy. There really isn't enough of that going on in general given the number of meetings but the relatively low number of reports that end up in print. The Bedside-to-Bench reports are a challenge, in some ways because understanding cancer biology and developing better cancer therapy is a challenge. However the exercise is extremely valuable in the end because these manuscripts bring together and remind the readers of the clinical features, presentations and disease course, as well as summarize the current molecular understanding. The theory is that readers of Bedside-to-Bench reports might think about the problems from their own perspective, perhaps sparking new approaches or insights, not to mention the excellent value of such reports as educational tools.

For the Research Philosophy section, edited by Vivek Rangnekar, there are a number of (juicy) topics of interest that we would like to see get some coverage. Some of these include career choices in academia vs. industry, regulatory hurdles and research progress, collaborations with pharmaceutical companies (addressing arrangements, benefits and potential conflicts of interest), views on patenting genes, mice, and to whose benefit, matrix vs stand alone cancer centers, models for translational research, and views about scientific publishing. Additional topics of interest and ideas for Research Philosophy pieces are mentioned in the introductory description published by Vivek in the January, 2002 issue of CB&T. You can write about your own experiences, frustrations, or if you know of particularly experienced authors, perhaps those with extensive industry ties or those who have worked on both ends; those experiences, advice and insights would be of great interest for our readers.

This Editorial Board is highly distinguished and accomplished in the field. This is significant in order to continue to set a tone of excellence in what we publish. Maintaining outstanding quality of original papers is our highest priority and it is our hope and expectation that Editorial Board members would use this journal as an appropriate place to publish. Please continue to mention Cancer Biology & Therapy to your colleagues as a great place to publish their exciting novel results. Many of you have published some very nice papers and reviews and it is due to your great efforts that the journal is doing well.

Sincerely,

Wafik S. El-Deiry, M.D. Ph.D.

Editor-in-Chief

Cancer Biology & Therapy