Molecular Therapy's New Open-access Sibling

Abstract

We are thrilled to announce the launch of MolecularTherapy—Nucleic Acids (MTNA), the second official journal of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) and the first of what we hope will be a series of online-only, open-access sibling journals serving both members and nonmembers alike of the ASGCT. We launched the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics section in Molecular Therapy (MT) in 2008 and have seen submissions grow strongly since then. In 2011, we published twice as many papers in this burgeoning field than just 3 years earlier. This impressive growth continues and the launch of MTNA thus provides an alternate venue for the ASGCT to publish more of the best of work in this field. At the same time, it ensures that we maintain a more generalist approach in MT so as to continue to provide balanced coverage of the diverse but overlapping fields that fall under the “molecular therapy” umbrella. Indeed, the concept of “targeted delivery” is front and center, whether we are discussing replacement cell therapy, gene therapy, or therapeutics based on gene silencing. We also envisage less of an emphasis on animal model data in MTNA (although we certainly welcome such submissions), and a greater emphasis on early-stage development of novel oligonucleotide-based strategies (whether vector-based or delivered via nanoparticle formulations) and the mechanisms that underlie them. In addition, MT has recently seen strong growth of submissions in the field of genome engineering using natural and synthetic nucleases, and we have deliberately decided to consider manuscripts in MTNA on this topic as well, owing to the potential impact of these new tools on the manipulation of gene expression and the development of gene-based therapies.