Editorial

I was truly excited when the Board of Publications Trustees invited me to assume the leadership of the Editorial Advisory Board of Molecular Interventions (MI). First, the publication holds a unique position in the family of ASPET journals as the most recently launched. Second, the previous Chair of the Editorial Advisory Board, Sue Duckles, placed MI on solid ground as she fostered this new initiative from concept to publication. It is remarkable that under Sue’s watch PubMed so rapidly indexed MI. Sue also identified two critical factors for MI’s success: Editor Harry B. Smith and Associate Editor John W. Nelson. Without these talented editors, MI would not be the widely acclaimed journal it has become. Finally, the MI format provides a unique opportunity to emphasize the phenomenal changes that are occurring in pharmacology and to capture the thoughts, energy, and interests of members of the scientific community that heretofore have overlooked ASPET journals.

The opportunity MI provides all of us reminds me of a statement by Norman Vincent Peale: “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” During my four-year term as Chair of the Editorial Advisory Board, I intend to build on Sue Duckles’s remarkably successful experiment, adding new Departments, engaging new Board members, and probing novel terrain in Pharmacology, Biology, and Chemistry. While the power of reductionist science cannot be denied, renewed interest in physiology and systems biology provides new pharmacological opportunities that must be acknowledged. Thus, the readers of MI should expect to see articles highlighting the use of different lower organisms, such as the one authored by Drs. Palladino and Celotto in the current issue (page 292). Developments in diversity-oriented chemical synthesis, combinatorial chemistry, high-throughput screening, and high content cell-based analyses are expanding the nature and number of small molecules available for use in probing pharmacologically interesting signaling pathways. Thus, future issues will educate readers about the newest developments in drug discovery and small molecule interrogation. The Editorial Board hopes members of the drug discovery and development community in academic and commercial organizations will find these presentations informative. We have already added new members of the pharmaceutical industry to the Board to help guide us. New to the Board will be graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, who we hope will provide a different perspective to the dynamic developments occurring in pharmacology. You will notice new departments, like Nascent Transcripts, found in this issue (page 273).

This is a wonderful time to be a pharmacologist. Our goal is to have you feel the need to take MI on every airplane trip; that you mention it at every research or faculty meeting; and that you tell your colleagues and students about our content. Harry, John, and I hope you will read, comment, and contribute to MI.

• © American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Theraputics 2005

John S. Lazo, Chair, Editorial Advisory Board