Editor’s inaugural issue foreword: perspectives on translational and clinical research
The efficacy with which human maladies can be treated by medical intervention generally depends on the extent of translational and clinical research conducted on the given illness before the diagnosis. This may be the reason why, for example, human immunodeficiency virus infections (~300,000 studies on “human immunodeficiency virus” indexed on PubMed) can nowadays be controlled with a cocktail of well-tolerated antiviral medication, while Ebola virus infections (~4,000 studies on “Ebola” indexed on PubMed) still kill ~50% of the infected individuals. Yet, the disease has been around for ~40 years. For Ebola, however, physicians still do not have the tools at this point to treat the patients [1] inasmuch as the tools have not yet been developed by scientists and processed through the translational and clinical research machinery. In the grand scheme of patient care, scientists and physicians therefore rely on each other in treating illness. This reliance is bi-directional, as scientists devise the means and tools for physicians to alleviate the condition while physicians provide the scientists with critical insights into the disease and crucial feedback on how patients respond to the treatment, which in turn gives guidance to the scientists.
This mutual reliance between scientists and physicians and patient-oriented focus constitute the very essence of the Journal of Clinical and Translational Research (JCTR). JCTR aims to disseminate preclinical and clinical research, centered on any clearly defined clinical problem, that ultimately benefits patients.
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