Current Opinion in Organ Transplantation was launched in 1996. It is part of a successful series of review journals whose unique format is designed to provide a systematic and critical assessment of the literature as presented in the many primary journals. The field of organ transplantation is divided into 18 sections that are reviewed once a year. Each section is assigned a Section Editor, a leading authority in the area, who identifies the most important topics at that time. Here we are pleased to introduce the Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors and Section Editors for this issue. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Linda S. SherLinda S. SherDr Sher is Associate Professor of Clinical Surgery and Director of Clinical Research in the Division of Hepatobiliary Surgery and Abdominal Organ Transplantation at Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California (USC), USA. After completing her medical school education and surgical residency at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, USA, Dr Sher undertook her fellowship training in Liver and Kidney Transplantation at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. After completing her fellowship in 1988, Dr Sher was involved in the establishment of two liver transplant programs in Los Angeles prior to joining the USC program in 2001. Dr Sher has participated in and overseen over 50 research projects and is currently very active in the development of the clinical and basic science research components of the USC Abdominal Organ Transplantation Program. She has numerous publications on immunosuppression, chronic rejection, disease recurrence, infection, prophylaxis and hepatobiliary surgery. Dr Sher is one of the original editors of Current Opinion in Organ Transplantation and has endeavored over the years to provide the reader with an up to date overview of the entire field of organ transplantation. ASSOCIATE EDITORS Josep M. GrinyóJosep M. GrinyóJosep Grinyó, MD, PhD, is the Chief of Nephrology at the University Hospital of Bellvitge, Spain, and Full Professor of Medicine at the University of Barcelona, Department of Medicine, Spain. Dr Grinyó's research work on renal transplantation has been focused on immunosuppression, ischemia-reperfusion injury and chronic allograft damage in the clinical setting and in experimental animal models. Josep Grinyó is Associate Editor of the Current Opinion in Transplantation, Transplant International, Consulting Editor of the American Journal of Transplantation and member of the editorial boards of Transplantation and Kidney International. Josep Grinyó has authored or coauthored over 300 articles and given more than 200 invited lectures. Jerzy Kupiec-WeglinskiJerzy Kupiec-WeglinskiDr Kupiec-Weglinski graduated from Warsaw Medical Academy in 1974, and received his Ph.D. at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1979 he joined the Transplant Research Laboratories, Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, USA. Since 1997, Dr Kupiec-Weglinski has been the Director of Dumont- University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Transplant Research Laboratories in Los Angeles, USA. He is Professor of Surgery and Pathology, and Vice-Chairman, Department of Surgery (Research), at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He holds the Joan S. and Ralph N. Goldwyn Endowed Chair in Transplantation Research. Dr Kupiec-Weglinski's interests focus on the immunobiology of organ ischemia and reperfusion injury, host sensitization, and tolerance induction. He has authored over 400 papers. He is Associate Editor of Current Opinion in Organ Transplantation and serves as a member of the editorial board of Transplantation, Liver Transplantation, Transplantation Immunology, Annals of Transplantation, among others. His research for the last 25 years has been funded by National Institute of Health (NIH) and he is currently a standing member of the Transplantation, Tolerance and Tumor Immunology (TTT) NIH Study Section. Dr Kupiec-Weglinski is a past member of the board of directors of American Society of Transplantation, and recipient of AST/Astellas Established Investigator Award in Basic Transplant Research. He holds the Honorary Doctorate (“Honoris Causa”) from Medical Academy in Warsaw, and is the Foreign Member of Polish Academy of Sciences. SECTION EDITORS Maria Puerto Hernandez-FuentesMaria Puerto Hernandez-FuentesDr Hernandez-Fuentes completed an MD in Universidad Complutense, Spain and her PhD in Immunology in Universidad de Alcalá, Spain. In 1998 she arrived in the UK to do her first post-doc with Professor Robert Lechler, then at Imperial College London, Hammersmith Hospital, UK. In 2005 the research group moved to King's College London, UK and from November 2006 she has been working in Professor Graham Lord's group. She has been leading the Biomarker Research Team in the MRC centre for Transplantation since August 2009. The multidisciplinary Biomarker Research Team is mainly focused in the development of biomarkers that could be predictive of kidney transplant outcome and could eventually enable biomarker-lead individualisation of therapy. Genome wide association scans, gene expression and immunologic monitoring techniques are being used. Moreover, she has a long standing interest in characterizing and quantifying alloimmune responses in humans. She is also dedicated to studying the role of B cells in transplantation tolerance. Her research includes the UKI-RT Consortium which has coordinated the largest genome-wide association scan in the world, analysing both donor and recipient genomic variation in renal transplant patients that associates with long term graft survival. The research team have analysed over 10,000 DNA samples. In addition, the tolerance biomarkers programme investigates peripheral blood markers of long term allograft survival. The group recently discovered a 'signature of tolerance’ in man which may enable some transplant recipients to reduce the damaging immunosuppressive drugs which they are required to take (Sagoo et al, JCI 2010). The section hopes to take this research into early translation shortly. Maria is also involved in a programme on biomarkers of rejection and immune monitoring, the aims of which are to identify and validate a set of biomarkers in non-invasive samples that will stratify patients into high and low risk of rejection, and biomarkers that will predict AR episodes, with a goal to treat early and avoid graft biopsies. Elke EggenhoferElke EggenhoferElke Eggenhofer is a group leader at the Department of Surgery, University Hospital Regensburg, Germany. She was awarded her Ph.D. in 2005 by the Department of Genetics, University of Regensburg, for her research into bacterial chemotaxis and motility protein interactions in the laboratory of Prof. Schmitt. During a five year post doctoral position under the mentorship of Prof. Edward Geissler, Dr Eggenhofer focused on transplantational research, working in the Department of Experimental Surgery, University Hospital Regensburg. Her findings provided the preclinical data set for Germany's first approved Investigator Initiated Clinical trial using Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Solid Organ Transplantation (MiSOT-I trial, Principle Investigator Dr Marc-Hendrik Dahlke). In 2011, Dr Eggenhofer founded her own group; her laboratory focuses on transplantation related organ damage, marginal organs and early graft failure, with a particular emphasis on the development of specific, early interventional therapies. Walter MarkWalter MarkWalter Mark graduated with a thesis on xenotransplantation at Innsbruck Medical University, Austria. In 1995, surgical training was followed by a 1-year fellowship in transplantation and immunology at F.H. Bach's institution in Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. After board certification he held a position as senior registrar in Birmingham, U.K. under Paul McMaster from 2000 to 2001. Back home in Austria, Walter Mark became Professor of Surgery and lead the clinical pancreas transplant program and advanced to Director of the Abdominal Transplant Program of Innsbruck University Hospital in 2005. After setting the path in a rat pancreas transplant model he developed a surgical and endoscopic technique for enteroscopic duodenal biopsies in clinical pancreas transplantation. Apart from chronic rejection and I/R injury studied in various small animal models clinical protocols were tested dealing with Campath and Tac monotherapy. Since 2002 Walter Mark has been member of the Editorial Board of Transplantation, has served as President of Austrotransplant Conference in 2009 and has published over 100 peer reviewed papers in the field. In 2012 Walter Mark was elected as Director of Department of General and Visceral Surgery TILAK-Trust Hospital Hall, Austria.