The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and its Society for Biological Engineering (SBE), in partnership with John Wiley and Sons, will launch a new quarterly, peer-reviewed, online, open-access journal, "Bioengineering & Translational Medicine," in 2016. Edited by Samir Mitragotri of the University of California, Santa Barbara, the new journal will focus on ways chemical and biological engineering are driving innovations and solutions that impact clinical practice and commercial healthcare products. The journal will also highlight scientific and technical breakthroughs currently in the process of clinical and commercial translation.
In announcing "Bioengineering & Translational Medicine," AIChE Executive Director June Wispelwey said that the new journal represents “one of the latest and most significant examples of the strengths that chemical and biological engineers bring to the frontiers of inter-disciplinary research and its application.”
In discussing his plans as the journal’s editor, Dr. Mitragotri said, “Converting engineering advances into useful clinical products is a major challenge that requires attention to issues such as safety, manufacturability, regulatory hurdles, cost, and patient acceptance, among others.” These issues, he pointed out, are not typically considered in fundamental academic research. “Clinical translation also often needs concurrent consideration of commercial translation, with the team and the resources required for clinical translation often assembled during commercial translation,” he explained. He added that this interplay presents its own set of challenges.
"Bioengineering & Translational Medicine" welcomes manuscripts that provide new insights into translational hurdles, as well as examples of technologies that have demonstrated progress toward clinical or commercial translation. It invites contributions on topics including, but not limited to, drug delivery, drug discovery, tissue engineering, synthetic biology, gene therapy, computational modeling and bioinformatics, among others. (A more comprehensive list of topics can be found in the journal’s statement of scope.) The journal will include research reports, reviews, and rapid communications. Fully open access "Bioengineering & Translational Medicine" will be published under CC-BY license.
Additional information is available at the journal's homepage or by email at biotm@aiche.org.