Education Mission for Neuroimmune Pharmacology

Abstract

It is pleasing to us to offer an article series on education for the field of neuroimmune pharmacology, a field defined as encompassing interdisciplinary studies comprising research into fundamental concepts in pharmacology, immunology, and neuroscience. The field brings together researchers and research activities that target infectious, metabolic, and degenerative nervous system diseases (Ikezu and Gendelman 2008). Such interdisciplinary research serves to dissolve the usual boundaries posed by classic academic departments serving to increase cooperation by bridge building between the disciplines of neurosciences, immunology, and pharmacology. Indeed, members of our own Society on NeuroImmune Pharmacology (SNIP) hail from a broad range of departments including surgery, internal medicine, pharmacology, pharmaceutics, neuroscience, cell biology and anatomy, pathology, and microbiology and immunology among others. Collectively, such efforts are intended to improve existing research cultures enabling fresh approaches and team science building to engender novel initiatives for conducting research and educating the next generations of scientists and physicians. Such an integrative field has emerged as a seminal source of new knowledge that has fostered fresh insights into the neuroimmune axis. In particular, the discipline of neuroimmune pharmacology serves as an incubator for innovative ideas in the roles played by endogenous and exogenous neuroimmunomodulatory agents including abuses of drugs in neuropathologic processes. For the latter, the role of substances of abuse on the immune and nervous systems is a focus for research and educational activities. Prior investigations in the field have led to novel insights into the etiology, prevention, and treatment of infections of the nervous system that include the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and a range of neurodegenerative processes such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and stress-related disorders. Our SNIP was organized in 1993 to serve as a platform for dissemination and exchange of knowledge in the interdisciplinary neuroimmune pharmacology field. It held its first annual conference as a working group of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence in Toronto, Canada. The Society has since expanded the scope of its conferences to promote engagement of national and international scientists and clinicians. Furthermore, it has been actively engaged in training junior investigators in neuroimmune pharmacology. Its 17th annual conference will be held in April 2011 in Clearwater Beach, Florida focusing on HIV infection of the nervous system and its interplay with substance abuse. In 2006, the Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology (JNIP) was established as the official peer-review publication forum of the Society with Dr. Howard Gendelman as Editor-in-Chief. The Editorial Board consists of more than 50 renowned scientists who have joined together to advance research knowledge in cross-disciplinary fields of neuroscience, immunology, and pharmacology. In 2008, a new textbook, Neuroimmune S. L. Chang (*) Institute of NeuroImmune Pharmacology, Seton Hall University, 400 South Orange Avenue, South Orange, NJ 07079, USA e-mail: sulie.chang@shu.edu