Issues
Interview with Luca Pani the Editor In Chief
Why a new Journal in the pharmacological field?
About fifteen years ago, in a supplement issue of the British Journal of Pharmacology, Patrick Vallance and Trevor Smart in an article entitled “The future of Pharmacology” (1) wrote that Pharmacological approaches to treatment seem unlikely to be on the wane and the need for experts in all aspects of drug action will never be greater. We agree.
This journal intends to teach and inform experts in any portion of the drug research and development journey from products design conception to managed entry agreements for their reimbursement. It just so happens that Pharmacology has become the bridging knowledge discipline of reference spanning from ethics across physiology, genetic and molecular biology into organ-based ‘omics’ grouping up to information-based system analytics.
Thus, a formidable array of tasks confronts the modern Scholars in Pharmacology. Not only they will have to master the latest techniques, but exponential creativity in the approach to functional translational research seem to be on the rise nowadays. Is, for example, the “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats” (CRISPR) technique doomed after only 5 brief years of its technological life, even before delivering any of its highly anticipated clinical promises? (2) On the other hand, the year that just went by has been the one of the two very first Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) and axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta) both the most effective and expensive cancer drugs ever (3).
Finally, the journal will account for the latest development in Digital Therapeutics such as the September 2017 U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the reSET application (an App) by Pear Therapeutics (Boston, MA) for treatment of substance use disorder, which was proven to be efficacious in the treatment of outpatients with alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, and stimulant dependence (4).
What’s new in PharmAdvances (e.g. editorial policy, improved peer review process, open access and other aspects of the journal)?
PharmAdvances adheres to the highest standards concerning its editorial policies on publication ethics, scientific misconduct, consent and peer review criteria. The journal follows guidance produced by bodies that include the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). To view all PharmAdvances Journal policies please refer to our Author Hub policies page.
We take seriously all misconducts. If an Editor, author or reader has concerns that a submitted article describes something that might be considered to constitute misconduct in research, publication or professional behavior they should forward their concerns to the journal. The publisher will deal with allegations appropriately.
As an open access journal, PharmAdvances adheres to the Budapest Open Access Initiative definition of open access. Articles are published under a Creative Commons license to facilitate reuse of the content and authors retain copyright; please refer to the PharmAdvances Open Quality Copyright Author License Statement.
Which are the goals, and which is the target (i.e. reasons to publish)?
We believe that even after thousands of years Pharmacology is still the most fascinating Science within the art and the heart of Medicine, its future will bloom from the intersections of integrative disciplines that encompass biology, information and communication technology with big data. The concept of precision medicine way before the genetic explanation of it, is at the essence of pharmacology differentiating the populations (or rather the stratified clusters) of patients who respond from those who don’t. We believe that Pharmacology has never been so “holistic” as it is now. One can still study and dissect each and every sub-molecular portion of any apparent linear pathway which serves a mechanism of action, but many of the inter- and intracellular messengers’ cascades are not linear, and they could never be reduced as such. Our target is the representations by the articles PharmAdvances will publish the complex systems that modulate and influence each other across a wide range of effect both explaining the safety first and the efficacy of any pharmacological product.
References
- Vallance P and Smart TG, The future of pharmacology, Br J Pharmacol. 147(Suppl 1): S304–S307 (2006)
- Kosicki M, Tomberg K, Bradley A. Repair of double-strand breaks induced by CRISPR–Cas9 leads to large deletions and complex rearrangements Nature Biotechnology volume 36, 765–771 (2018)
- https://www.ascopost.com/issues/may-25-2018/weighing-the-cost-and-value-of-car-t-cell-therapy/ last accessed Nov 5th 2018
- https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-permits-marketing-mobile-medical-application-substance-use-disorder last accessed Nov 5th 2018
