Building Hepatocullular Carcinoma Awareness: Dove Press introduces a new specialty journal

Dove Medical Press has launched the Journal of Hepatocellular Carcinoma. This is an international, peer-reviewed, open access, online journal that will focus on hepatobiliary tumors.

According to journal editor-in-chief, Professor Brian Carr MD, FRCP, PhD, the new journal will publish on a varying range of topics, including developments in the areas of epidemiology, vaccination, hepatitis therapy, pathology, molecular tumor classification and prognostication, new radiological techniques, amazing new classes of targeted medical therapies, and a resultant vast increase in the associated clinical trials and reports.

Primary liver tumors, primarily hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), is the third leading cause of cancer death worldwide, with approximately 750,000 new cases annually and approximately 700,000 deaths. 80% occurs in the developing world, in which the incidence is beginning to decline, due to HBV vaccination and developments in food hygiene; with an increasing incidence in the developed world, partly due to metabolic syndrome, obesity and diabetes. There are major variations in geographic incidence and gender susceptibility.

According to Carr, there has been a disconnection between HCC science and clinical practice for over 30 years. "Suddenly all that has changed. We had 2 treatments for the longest time: resection or chemoembolization. A volcanic shift occurred with the availability of liver transplantation for small tumors in the early 1980s, then again with the FDA approval for HCC of the first oral multikinase inhibitor recently."

"There has been an explosion of new drugs being developed as a result of advances in understanding the cell cycle, differentiation and metastasis, and their current clinical testing. These have resulted in a massive increase in the study of molecular and biochemical mechanisms of HCC growth and development and the study of these new agents alone and in combination, on the biology of HCC in vitro and in vivo," says Carr.

A journal dedicated to receiving and disseminating this rapidly advancing body of research was needed. According to Carr, "This journal will provide a vehicle for publishing both new ideas and experimental work, as well as new insights and findings from clinical evaluation of the new drugs and the new biology. Young and experienced investigators alike are welcome to submit their work to our new journal and are also invited to participate in its development."

"We offer the international community a platform for the dissemination and study of clinical, translational and basic research findings in this rapidly developing field," Carr explains.

Professor Carr has devoted both his clinical activities and research science efforts to the clinical and scientific study of primary liver cancer (HCC or hepatocellular carcinoma). He has spent the last 35 years working in hepatocellular carcinoma. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland, educated in London, where he got his medical training and degree, and after residency and fellowship in oncology, did a molecular biology PhD at Imperial College, London, with Nobel Laureate Renato Dulbecco. Since 1977 he has work in the USA and was professor of oncology and director of the Liver Cancer Center for 20 years in the University of Pittsurgh and then for 5 years at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia. He has been continously involved in HCC patient care and in HCC basic science.

Dove Medical Press Ltd is a privately held company specializing in the publication of 125+ Open Access peer-reviewed journals across the broad spectrum of science, technology and especially medicine.

Updated 23 July 2014