Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Mark N Gillespie, Ph.D. has joined the AJP-Lung team.

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Mark Gillespie as Associate Editor of the American Journal of Physiology-Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology, his appointment was effective July 1, 2015.





Dr. Gillespie is a native of Chicago, IL, received his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Kentucky in 1977 and 1981, respectively.  He was a postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Colorado’s Cardiovascular-Pulmonary Research Laboratory until 1982 after which he was recruited back to the University of Kentucky where he rose to the rank of Professor and Chairperson of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.  In 1995, he relocated to his current affiliation, the University of South Alabama, where he serves as Professor and Chair of Pharmacology and founding member of the Center for Lung Biology.  Over the past two decades, Dr. Gillespie has served as ad hoc or regular member or chairperson of multiple NIH study sections and held leadership positions in organizations dedicated to lung health and disease.   His research program, supported continuously by the NIH and other agencies for the past 30 years, focuses on selected aspects of lung biology and pathology, most recently concentrating on how oxidative damage and repair in the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes dynamically regulates lung cell responses to oxidant stress.


Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Plasma gelsolin improves host defense



Zhiping Yang , Terry Ting-Yu Chiou , Thomas P. Stossel , Lester Kobzik
American Journal of Physiology - Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology Published 1 July 2015 Vol. 309 no. 1, L11-L16 DOI: 10.1152/ajplung.00094.2015 

Bacterial pneumonia remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, and bacterial pneumonia occurring post-influenza infection is a devastating complication.  With the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant bacterial species, it is imperative for scientists to investigate ways to enhance the body’s own immune defense against potentially pathogenic microorganisms.  In terms of respiratory infections, the alveolar macrophage within the lung is the sentinel phagocyte responsible for patrolling airspaces and clearing pathogens.  In this issue of AJP Lung, Yang et al. describe the ability of a protein normally found in human blood called plasma gelsolin to enhance the ability of alveolar macrophages to kill ingested pathogens.  Plasma gelsolin has previously been shown to have beneficial functions for limiting inflammatory reactions, and it has been known that levels of plasma gelsolin can be depleted during acute pneumonia in humans, but no previous studies had directly shown evidence that it could enhance bacterial killing functions.  This interesting study demonstrated plasma gelsolin could increase the rate at which macrophages ingest bacteria as well as increase the efficiency of killing the bacteria once engulfed.  Importantly, these effects were via direct actions on the macrophages and not caused by simple opsonization of the bacteria.  In mechanistic studies, they demonstrated the ability of plasma gelsolin to upregulate NOS3, an enzyme necessary for synthesis of reactive nitrogen intermediates necessary for intracellular bacterial killing.  Using murine models, the investigators demonstrated that pre-treatment with plasma gelsolin could improve host defense and protect mice against lethal bacterial pneumonia.  Clearly more work needs to be done to determine whether plasma gelsolin can have beneficial effects if given after infection, but there is one clinical scenario where bacterial infection can be predicted, and that is in the case of pneumonia which often occurs about a week following influenza infection.  This study suggests that patients at high risk for bacterial complication of influenza infection could be treated prophylactically with plasma gelsolin to improve their chances of surviving post-viral secondary pneumonia.  Thus, this is a particularly encouraging study for a major clinical problem.

Bethany Moore
Associate Editor
AJP-Lung

Thursday, July 2, 2015

AJP-Lung impact factor increases to 4.080!

The 2014 impact factors have been released. AJP-Lung is excited to announce  that our impact factor has increased to 4.080!  Our number of submissions are also 30% higher than last year.  We are in a roll!!
 
Congratulations to all the Associate Editors, Consulting Editors and Editorial Board Members whose enthusiasm has helped us to become the best journal to publish basic and translational original articles in the broad field of lung biology.  We look forward to the expanding the journal even further with the new appointments of Bethany Moore and Mark Gillespie to our Associate Editor team.  We would like to thank Drs. Stenmark and Patel whose terms ended on July 1st.  We wish them best success with their future endeavors.
 
Thank you all for your hard work and please continue submitting your best original articles to AJP-Lung.  They will be reviewed promptly and fairly and the reviews always improve the quality and impact of each article.  Also please contact me (sadis@uab.edu) with any ideas about reviews, calls for papers and how to improve the quality and impact of the journal.
 
With warm personal regards and many thanks
 
Sadis Matalon
Editor