Welcome to the Journal of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine

Abstract

Welcome to the new Journal of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine! It is, believe me, with great pleasure and some emotion that I write these words. It has been a long time since I, with some colleagues and collaborators, recognized the need for having a strong new journal in the field of tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, stem cells and biomedical materials. The first discussions on this took place, if I remember it well, in 2002. When we applied to create the European Network of Excellence (NoE) on Tissue Engineering – EXPERTISSUES (http://www.expertissues.org) – we included as one of the main goals and deliverables the creation of a new international journal in the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. The NoE was funded, in a very competitive selection process, by the Sixth Framework program (FP6) of the European Commission (EC), being the only European network of excellence in the field of tissue engineering. We all immediately agreed that a new journal, in this very competitive and rapidly evolving area, would need a main publishing house supporting it. The EXPERTISSUES project started in October 2004. The first proposal to John Wiley & Sons Ltd was made in late 2005, we reached agreement in April 2006, and now here we are, fully committed to making this journal a great success! All the research team leaders of EXPERTISSUES (from 20 Institutions in 13 countries), which I have the pleasure to coordinate, are members of the Editorial Board of the journal. This initial informal connection of the journal to the NoE will help to ensure a steady flow of good papers that is so important to launching a new journal, but it must be stressed that the journal is fully international, as can easily be seen from the composition of the Editorial Board.