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Biomedical research and clinical practice - open access

Kazuhisa Nishizawa

Department of Clinical Laboratory Science, Teikyo University, Japan

E-mail : kazunet@med.teikyo-u.ac.jp

DOI: 10.15761/BRCP.1000101

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It is my distinct honor and privilege to have accepted an invitation to become Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of Biomedical Research and Clinical Practice (BRCP), an online peer-reviewed open access journal. In my capacity as EIC and on behalf of our Editorial Board members we would like to forward a warm welcome to you, the readership of this new journal. We will be dedicated to provide the scientific and clinical community with the results of important advances in biomedical science and diverse disciplines relevant to medicine and clinical problems. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our prospective authors, the editors, and the anonymous reviewers for their dedication to contribute to the success of BRCP.

We now live in an era where science and engineering technology have revolutionized a number of areas of clinical medicine. On the front line of the clinical microbiology, mass spectrometry is used as a clinical diagnostic tool, changing the workflow of identification of microorganisms. For hereditary diseases, whole-exome sequencing strategy is under improvement to cover many clinically important genes. Biologic agents, such as inhibitors against TNF and interleukins, are showing efficacies in sparing steroids in trials and cases of rheumatoid arthritis. In neurology and psychiatry, clinicians in several countries are increasingly using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment in a variety of settings including recovery from stroke and depression treatment. These are just a few examples of achievement of interdisciplinary researches, which can link any of disciplines of biomedicine, such as physiology, biochemistry, chemical engineering, immunology, regenerative medicine, cell biology and bioinformatics, which are to be investigated considering their interdependence and relevance to clinical medicine. We are seeking a prominent forum integrating these disciplines to a greater extent than most of journals.

BRCP aims at a unique forum for the dissemination of interdisciplinary researches. Interdisciplinary researches are conceived and conducted in diverse styles/scales. They are mainly conducted as collaborations between clinicians/medical scientists and biological experimentalists, which is a natural trend as the amount of essential information within each discipline grows at an explosive rate, making collaborations necessary for advances. On the other hand, many interdisciplinary activities often root in just a single researcher’s mind inspired by his/her observation/approach. For example, not a few medicinal chemists are applying omics approaches to seeds or leaves of tropical plants that have historically been known in traditional/folkloric treatment. Physicians/therapists familiar with computation or robotics may develop a useful algorithm or a robotic device, motivated by his/her own experiences in treatment of patients.

As interdisciplinary research projects are conceived in diverse ways, in their very early phase some interdisciplinary researches may not appear to be, so called, ‘translational’. Translational research, which I think usually corresponds to a research (or a stage of research) that is planned to be interdisciplinary, is definitely important and it is our pleasure to be able to cover many of such studies. But, there are also fortuitous cases that start in a non-translational fashion but eventually come to show clinical merits. A well-known example is anti-cancer drug cisplatin, which was discovered when Dr. Rosenberg used a platinum electrode to examine the effects of electric fields on bacteria. A myriad of discoveries in reverse genetics of model organisms or bioinformatics analysis of animals, for example, have shown medical and clinical importance, although many were not planned as translational.

We encourage scientists to consider submitting manuscripts in all topics including chemistry, molecular and cell biology, microbiology, immunology, physiology, pharmacology, medical statistics, brain science, mathematical modeling, bioinformatics, genetics, material science and engineering as long as they have relevance to medicine or clinical medicine. One aspect that I will be particularly interested in receiving manuscript would be integration of elements or areas/disciplines that have been considered widely distant. Recent such examples involve a combination of microbiology and biochemistry, and that of mathematical modeling and vaccination protocol. Despite the effort to bridge distinct areas, and very because of this effort, the authors may feel unrewarded, having difficulty in finding editors/reviewers for their study. In a sense, it is this challenge what motivates me to contribute to this journal.

Given the diversity in the scale and the situation of conceiving interdisciplinary studies, it would also be beneficial to recognize that all researchers are not always have full access to sophisticated infrastructure or a perfect team of collaboration within a reasonable time period. Studies of rare diseases would require a long-term pilot study. These situations may increase relative importance of perspective papers that await rigorous validation of hypothesis. We recognize importance of free and creative discussions. As long as the findings/hypotheses have potential implications to medical/clinical issues, we think we should try to disseminate them. Having stated this, the Editorial Board of BRCP is committed to the rigorous peer-review of all submitted manuscripts, ensuring application of highest scientific standards to the peer-review process. We believe it is possible to support free and constructive discussions without compromising scientific rigor, weighing free thinking and rigorous discussion in a reasonable way

BRCP encourages submission of different manuscript formats, e.g., full length original articles, short research letters, review articles, reports on advancing technologies, clinical case reports, reports on clinical trial outcome, commentaries, hypotheses, controversies, congress reports and letters to the editor.

If you would like to have a specific topic in Biochemical Research and Clinical Practice, we strongly encourage you to submit proposals for special issues in which you can serve as a guest editor. Besides, the editorial board of BRCP will periodically announce calls for special issues on current hot topics.

Editorial Information

Editor-in-Chief

Kazuhisa Nishizawa
Teikyo University

Article Type

Editorial

Publication history

Received:February 02, 202021 Copyright OAT. All rights reserv Accepted: February 03, 2016
Published: February 05, 2016

Copyright

©2016Nishizawa K.This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation

Nishizawa K (2016) Biomedical research and clinical practice - open access. Biomed Res Clin Prac 1: DOI: 10.15761/BRCP.1000101

Corresponding author

Kazuhisa Nishizawa

Department of Clinical Laboratory Science, Teikyo University, Japan, Tel: +81-3-3964-1211, ext: 46136

E-mail : kazunet@med.teikyo-u.ac.jp

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