A Vision from the New Editor-in-Chief

It is my great honor to assume the mantle of Editor-in-Chief for Molecular Cancer Therapeutics (MCT), following in the foot-steps of our highly distinguished colleagues, Dr. Daniel Von Hoff, Dr. John Reed, and Dr. Napoleone Ferrara. The core mission of MCT is, and has always been, to provide a forum for communication of innovative, leading scientific research broadly covering the area of anticancer therapeutics with the participation of an expert editorial team and informed peer-reviewers to identify and publish high-quality scientific findings. The first issue of MCT was published in 2001, the same year that the first small-molecule receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor, imatinib, was approved by FDA for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia. The approval of imatinib was followed by the approval of other receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors including gefitinib (2003), erlotinib (2004), sorafenib (2005), and sunitinib and dasatinib (2006). To date, the FDA has approved about 40 small-molecule agents including receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors and serine-threonine kinase inhibitors for clinical application. MCT has published articles on nearly all these compounds, now drugs.

Since the early days of MCT, cancer therapeutics has evolved into a diverse spectrum of therapeutic entities. It is essential that this premier AACR therapeutics journal continues to evolve to cover all classes of experimental therapeutics with the potential to move forward into clinical development. Thus, the scope and the table of contents for MCT will be updated. Going forward, MCT will be the AACR journal for experimental cancer therapeutics, which strives to be the top choice for publishing initial disclosures, including first publication of the structures of new chemical entities, state of the art science in the discovery and preclinical development of novel therapeutic agents for oncology, novel preclinical studies of approved therapeutics, mechanisms of therapeutic action, and mechanisms of resistance. To reflect a broadly inclusive therapeutic scope, the table of contents will include small molecules, protein-based, RNA-based, virus-based, cell-based, and gene-based therapeutics and vaccines. To cover the broader scope of the journal, the senior editorial staff will be expanded to include experts in biological therapies while retaining and growing expertise in chemotherapeutics. To keep readership informed, each issue of MCT will include a review on a timely topic related to therapeutics, targets, or disease/therapeutic relationships. Although the scope of therapeutics that the journal will cover is broader, the annual article count is not expected to change.

Articles should include structures, mechanism-of-action studies in cell-free and cell-based systems, and human tumor xenograft or syngeneic tumor experiments to demonstrate reduction to practice in more than one model. There has been an increasing focus on how preclinical findings relate to and inform clinical performance of new therapeutic entities. To address this concern, MCT will encourage submission of experimental therapeutics, which includes analysis of and testing in clinical materials. In addition, reproducibility has become a paramount issue in science. Methods must include sufficient information to allow for the scientific reproduction of experiments described in the manuscript (including the preparation of therapeutic agents). Experiments must be performed in a sufficient number of models (cell lines, animal models, etc.) to support the conclusions presented in the manuscript. Supporting MCT's goal of becoming the choice for first disclosures, chemical structures of new entities must be disclosed.

I look forward to working with the global cancer research community, an outstanding editorial board, and an outstanding AACR publishing team to continue growing and evolving MCT to keep pace with the rapid progress being made in cancer therapeutics.