Frontiers in Immunology is delighted to announce the launch of its latest section, Autoimmune and Autoinflammatory Disorders. The section enjoys the steadfast leadership of two renowned experts in the field, Prof. Raphaela Goldbach-Mansky (National Institutes of Health [NIH]) and Prof. Betty Diamond (Feinstein Institute for Medical Research).

Dr Diamond leads the Center for Autoimmune, Musculoskeletal and Hematopoietic Diseases at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research where she studies the autoimmune disease “systemic lupus erythematosus”, focusing on the role that DNA-reactive B cells play in the disease. Dr. Goldbach-Mansky in turn works at the at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) where she leads the Translational Autoinflammatory Disease Studies (TADS): her work is translational and focuses on the role of inflammatory pathways on disease pathogenesis and on finding novel treatments for autoinflammatory diseases.

The new section aims to address key challenges facing the field, notably by providing a scholarly resource that can help practitioners “bring novel autoimmune and autoinflammatory findings into clinical practice by moving clinical practice into the molecular diagnostic age,” the Chief Editors said. Furthermore, Dr. Diamond and Dr. Goldbach-Mansky expect key publications to “increase physicians’ understanding of immune dysregulatory pathways and thus lay the groundwork for new diagnostics and treatments.”

The growth of genetic/genomic tools, the Chief Editors elaborate, make this field “an area ripe for study, and one that has a very immediate potential to alter medical practice.” Research in this section will extend immunology into “tissue specific features of immune cell populations to forms of organ damage that trigger an immune response and opens the arena of tissue-specific responses to immune activation and to specific immune responses to tissue damage.” The study of this field is consequently extremely timely, Dr. Goldbach-Mansky and Dr. Diamond highlight, not least because the section seeks to address questions that often fall between disciplines and are thus not the central focus of many other publications.

The section focuses on five main areas:

• The role of adaptive and/or innate immune responses in autoimmunity/auto- inflammation

• The role of genetic and/or epigenetic alterations in disease pathogenesis.

• The role of environmental exposure in triggering autoimmunity/autoinflammatory diseases.

• The role of metabolic dysregulation in immune and non-immune cells in autoimmunity/auto-inflammation.

• Dysregulation of signaling pathways that contribute to autoimmunity/auto-inflammation.

• Novel strategies for the development of treatments for autoimmune/autoinflammatory diseases.

Asked why Open Access is so crucial, Dr. Goldbach-Mansky and Dr. Diamond emphasize that they “anticipate many paradigms changing concepts and many discrepant observations to come forth as the field grows. For these reasons open access is critical, as is a process that doesn’t claim to know in advance what is important.” Frontiers’ unique review platform additionally allows thoughtful critique on manuscripts and thus the opportunity to discuss differences of opinion, the prominent scholarly duo underscores.

As Chief Editors, Dr. Diamond and Dr. Goldbach-Mansky are setting out to generate a forum that encourages “contributions by having a board of associate editors who are experts in the fields of autoimmunity and autoinflammation, and, of course, to satisfy and excite authors as well as a broad readership.” Frontiers in Immunology is very excited to help them develop this section and to materialize their vision.