As I take over as new editor of the International Journal of Radiation Biology, I want to extend special thanks to Richard Hill and Michael Rauth for the strong and gifted leadership they have provided for the journal in the past 13 years. Their tenure has seen the development of many new directions for the journal including new types of review articles, special issues devoted to selected topics, and others. They have continued to maintain the excellence of the journal in challenging times for science as a whole. They upheld the international status of the journal both through its readership and contributions. Their dedication has been evident in the pages of the IJRB and in the recognition that has come to the journal over the years.
This is an important time for radiation research as a whole. We have seen the application of radiation to many novel disciplines for which interaction has not been traditional including nutrition, immunology, epidemiology, and others. The inter-relationship of radiation biology with radiation chemistry, physics, and medicine has long been an important component to the field. In recent years, this interdisciplinary aspect of the work has extended to areas that cross broad types of relationships including those with systems biology, informatics, materials sciences, and others. The development of research that enables an understanding of radiation effects at multiple levels—from molecules to subcellular organelles to cells to animals to humans–is difficult but also essential. Moreover, interactions between radiation and other physical, chemical or biological stresses are still insufficiently explored, awaiting still more novel technical and methodological breakthroughs.
The emergence of big data in the field of radiation biology can be expected to transform some of the basic principles of radiation in coming years. New techniques and methods are used to study such issues as molecular changes associated with radioresistance of cancers, determination of pathways that are critical for survival and death following radiation exposure, a better understanding of molecular processes involved in low dose responses. Even without additional experiments, analyses of existing data from relevant studies will continue to contribute to a better and more firm understanding of effects of radiation on biological systems. Thus, dedicated radiation biology databases can be expected to become a critical component of new studies in this field.
Radioecology has become a growing area of interest in the broad community. Websites that catalogue the effects of radiation toxicities on different wildlife species –plants and animals have become important sources of information that can provide a deeper understanding of effects in humans and also on the planet as a whole.
Low dose radiation exposures continue to accompany many contemporary human activities, from work exposures in energy industries and medicine to doses originating from medical diagnostic procedures. Therefore, low dose radiation effects continue to be relevant for better quantification of the risks associated with low dose and low-dose-rate exposures. Questions about dose- and dose-rate effectiveness factors have led to continued discussion among international and national regulatory commissions; the reanalysis of old data with new approaches and interpretations is essential. Large-scale datasets from exposed humans (tumors and normal tissues) are becoming available and are likely to provide new information about modeling and predicting radiation responses of tumors and normal tissues thus impacting therapy. Large-scale datasets of radiation-exposed animals are available in Europe, North America, Japan and elsewhere; these extensive datasets and numerous samples combined with novel high throughput approaches enable investigation of such questions as low-dose and dose-rate effects, radiation-induced late tissue toxicities, and other effects. These studies all point to the changing landscape of radiation biology studies. While on-going linearly mechanistic studies of radiation effects are important and still make significant contributions to the field, high throughput and parallel radiation studies are expanding this field in new directions that would have been beyond the capabilities of past generations of radiation biological science.
It is my hope as editor that the International Journal of Radiation Biology can be the leader as the discipline of radiation biology moves into a new era expanding into new approaches and inter-disciplinary investigations.
Gayle Woloschak