Immuno—A New Multidisciplinary Open Access Journal for Immunological Science and Medicine

Welcome to Immuno. Immunological medicine has never been more exciting as a research field and more relevant to human health and diseases than during the last ten years. The development of immune-checkpoint blockades and chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy has greatly changed the standard therapy for many kinds of advanced cancer, and at present, novel immunological technologies are applied to the vaccines against the COVID-19 pandemic, the devastation caused by SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Cancer immunity and infectious immunity has been attracting a great deal of public attention in the world. While immunotherapy is expected to serve as an effective therapeutic and/or prophylactic option for many intractable diseases, it has been revealed that it may cause immune-related adverse events through an unknown pathological mechanism. In this context, we have learned a lot of unexpected outcomes from the clinical practice of immunotherapy, and therefore, the importance of reverse-translational research that ensures the feedback from bedside to bench has been emerging. In addition, recent advances of new technologies such as next-generation sequencer, mass cytometry, and a single-cell omics technology have expanded and accelerated basic research on the developing fields of immunology including immunogenomics, immunoproteomics, immunometabolomics, and immunomicrobiomics, which should contribute to improving the understanding of the yet-unknown aspects of the human immune system, as well as the development of innovative immunotherapy and vaccine through translational research.

Under such circumstances, Immuno, a new multidisciplinary open access journal for immunological science and medicine has been launched. Immuno covers all aspects of immunology from basic research to clinical research, as shown in Figure 1. However, as the first Editor-in-Chief, I would like to emphasize forward and reverse-translational research that bridges a gap between bench and bedside by using novel technologies.

To leap forward, we are planning a series of Special Issues focusing on immunology topics of particular interest and importance, including immunopathology of COVID-19, coronavirus vaccine, cancer immunotherapy, synthetic immunology, immune-related adverse events of immunotherapeutics, and autoimmune diseases. I expect Immuno to become a venue for the rapid publication of high-quality immunology research from basic and clinical scientists around the world. On behalf of all members of the editorial board, I would like to extend our welcome to this new journal and look forward to learning and publishing your original research.