Broadening the translational immunology landscape

Abstract

SummaryIt is just over 5 years since Clinical and Experimental Immunology came under the direction of a new team of Editors and made a concerted effort to refresh its approach to promoting clinical and applied immunology through its pages. There were two major objectives: to foster papers in a field which, at the time, we loosely termed 'translational immunology'; and to create a forum for the presentation and discussion of immunology that is relevant to clinicians operating in this space. So, how are we doing with these endeavours? This brief paper aims to summarize some of the key learning points and successes and highlight areas in which translational gaps remain. Keywords Gathering opinionsOne of the better ways to serve the clinical and experimental immunology community has proved to be in asking it to provide reviews, opinion pieces, disease guidelines and high-level, 'best-practice' essays aimed at postgraduate training and beyond. These latter have proved a considerable success, and we have now published more than 13 of these papers in a series describing the approach to patients with different immune-mediated conditions [1][2][3]. These papers have also become a publicly accessible resource through the British Society for Immunology website [4]. This concept has spawned a further wave of recent review papers focusing similarly on 'immunology in the clinic' , which have also proved to be of major interest to readers, attracting thousands of downloads [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. Papers that provide guidelines and disease classifications to practising clinical immunologists and rheumatologists are an important part of this dissemination process, and here we have particularly promoted areas such as the vasculitides [3,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29] and primary immunodeficiency [30][31][32][33]. Clinical immunology in practiceThe journal has also welcomed regular research papers that have addressed important topics in the translational pathway. Various aspects of clinical care in primary immunodeficiency have been highlighted, including patient and research databases, patient-centric screening protocols, clinical uses of immunoglobulin replacement and health economics [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42]. The journal is striving to become a key forum for these issues, especially in disease settings that are niche areas for clinical immunologists, such as immunodeficiency, and therefore do not otherwise have clear publishing outlets. We have also highlighted emerging fields, including tumour immunotherapy [14][15][16][17]43,44] and the autoinflammatory diseases [11][12][13], as well as the more traditional domains of the translational immunologist, such as allergy [18,22,45]. Clinically relevant advances in cell separation technology and the identification of pathogenic T cells in autoimmunity and inflammation have also been featured [46][47][48]. New insights into immunopathologyOne of the strengths of the journal is the prevailing interest in underlying cellular and m...