Carrying the torch & facing new challenges

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EDITORIAL

Carrying the torch & facing new challenges Haidong Dong1

© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020

More than 60 years ago, while the field of cancer immunology was in its advent searching for a novel therapy for cancer, Dr. Georges Mathé, the founding editor of Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy (CIIM), performed the world´s first successful allogeneic bone marrow transplant (1958), which he considered to be a form of cancer therapy and sparked a light in the dark for researchers. Years later in 1972, he lit the torch in the form of a specialist journal of CIIM, a title that perfectly reflected his foresight for the potential impact of immunotherapy in cancer treatment now widely accepted and practiced 40 years later. CIIM is recognized as the first journal in the cancer immunology field and it is important that we pay homage to the founder, and the successor pioneers, as we stand on their shoulders continuing the progress and advancements in this field of research and treatment. We humbly recognize the contribution and leadership of the founder and previous editors: Founding Editor: Georges Mathé; and previous CoEditors-in-Chief: Robert Baldwin, Enrico (Henry) Mihich, Graham Pawelec, and Suzanne Ostrand-Rosenberg, CIIM’s visionary leaders. They each made a significant impact in cancer immunology from their own research, while leading, managing and promoting CIIM from a specialist journal to one with a general impact in cancer therapy. As one of the first journals in cancer immunology and immunotherapy, CIIM was poised to promote the field when “immunological intervention as therapeutic modality for cancer was only a concept”. From there, Dr. Ostrand-Rosenberg predicted that “immunotherapy can become an efficacious mainstream treatment for cancer” in 2013.When Dr. Pawelec assumed the role of EIC of CIIM (2003), he said: “While the time may be propitious for the maturing field of cancer immunology and immunotherapy, times are difficult for small specialist journals like this one…It is my firm belief that

* Haidong Dong [email protected] 1



Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA

immunology is the key to successful cancer therapy.”. As they predicted, the recent successful implementation of cancer immunotherapy as a standard of care in cancer treatment, reflects the importance of the research published in CIIM and other journals, that collectively contribute to the establishment of cancer immunotherapy along with other cancer therapies as standard of care. This is an auspicious time to celebrate their vision, leadership, and many accomplishments in CIIM. As Dr. Pawelec pointed out: “Translational research, and with it the publication not only of success stories, but also of the less positive data, will become of ever greater importance in this difficult area”. Under their leadership, commitment and service, the research articles in CIIM contributed to the collective wisdom of great minds around the world for the breakthroughs in cancer immuno