Personalized medicine holds promise for treating a host of diseases, particularly cancer. In the post-genomic era, the opportunities and challenges for medicine will be to understand disease mechanisms and pathophysiology before symptoms appear. Using genomic, proteomic and other “omics” we hope to predict risks, identify patient subtypes, and personalize treatments based on the molecular characterization of diseases, as well as to predict treatment outcomes. Molecular imaging is a field that reaps the fruit of discoveries in the understanding of the biological processes at the molecular level, with the spatial and time resolution dependent on the specific imaging technology employed. The ultimate goal in treating all human diseases is to treat patient with the right drug(s) at the right time, and monitor the therapeutic efficacy in a quantitative, non-invasive, and accurate manner in real time. In many clinical scenarios, this goal can only be achieved through molecular imaging.
Molecular imaging is an extremely dynamic field of research and represents the convergence of multiple disciplines. Molecular imaging will advance with the cooperative efforts of biologists, chemists, engineers, medical physicists, clinicians, researchers from academia, pharmaceutical industries, federal funding agencies, the Food and Drug Administration, among many others. Open access facilitates the timely and broad dissemination of groundbreaking discoveries that can advance molecular imaging and the translation to personalized medicine.
The American Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (AJNMMI; ISSN: 2160-8407; http://www.ajnmmi.us/) is an open access journal, which allows instant, worldwide, and barrier-free access to the full text of all published articles through internet access. The online-only format will shorten the time needed from acceptance of a manuscript to publication, and open access will allow readers from various research areas to access articles published in this journal for free. AJNMMI will be launched as a quarterly journal, and will gradually expand to a monthly journal over the next few years after it gains sufficient exposure and recognition in the scientific community.
AJNMMI is dedicated to the rapid publication of research findings in nuclear medicine and molecular imaging. The scope of AJNMMI encompasses all modalities of molecular imaging, including but not limited to: positron emission tomography (PET), single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), molecular magnetic resonance imaging, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, optical bioluminescence, optical fluorescence, targeted ultrasound, photoacoustic tomography, Raman spectroscopy, multimodality imaging, among others. AJNMMI welcomes original and review articles on both clinical investigation and preclinical research.
Manuscripts published in AJNMMI are subjected to peer-review and are expected to meet the most rigorous standards of academic excellence. To ensure top-quality publications and cutting-edge science in AJNMMI, we have assembled an exceptional Editorial Board which include leaders from the funding agencies (e.g. the National Cancer Institute), world-class universities, industry (e.g. GE Healthcare, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, etc.), and many other institutes/centers/agencies. Although the title of the journal includes “American”, this is by all means an international journal as evidenced by the representation of Editorial Board members from 16 countries in North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania.
The initial idea of this exciting new journal was seeded during a Christmas Party at the end of 2009. Fifteen months later in April 2011, the seed has germinated and the first invitation letters were sent to potential Editorial Board members on April 5th. In less than 2 months, we already have ~140 Editorial Board members to cover all areas of molecular imaging, which will ensure that manuscripts submitted to AJNMMI will be rigorously reviewed by multiple experts in the field. We are deeply touched by the whole-hearted support from the Editorial Board members, all of whom have many responsibilities and yet they chose to support our journal. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of them for making the launch of AJNMMI possible. With such tremendous support and participation, we are confident that AJNMMI will soon become a leading journal in the field.