BMC Medical Genomics publishes first articles

Today sees the publication of the first articles in BMC Medical Genomics. The biological sciences have been transformed by the recent explosion in genomic technology and genome sequencing projects and the next decade will see a similar revolution in medicine. BMC Medical Genomics aims to maximize the visibility and impact of this vital and growing field of research.

BMC Medical Genomics publishes articles on functional genomics, genome structure, genome-scale population genetics, epigenomics, proteomics, systems analysis and pharmacogenomics in relation to human health and disease, and is indexed by PubMed, BIOSIS, CAS, EMBASE, and Google Scholar.

By providing information on the interaction between genes, drugs and diseases, genomic approaches to medicine promise to contribute to the delivery of personalized and individual medical treatment. This is of particular relevance as these technologies increase in affordability and availability, especially given the enormous costs of the latest generation pharmaceutical drugs that often have serious side-effects or fail to work in significant sub-categories of patients.

The journal is entirely open access – all articles will be immediately available to read online at no charge to the reader. The availability of relevant published peer-reviewed research to clinicians, researchers, and patients is particularly important, especially given the rapid growth of commercial genetic testing and the concerns that have been raised about the lack of validation of such tests.

The first articles published today in BMC Medical Genomics display the breadth of topics covered by the journal, including molecular subtyping (McDonnell et al.) and biomarker profiling (Gast et al.), as well as fine mapping of chromosomal aberrations in bladder cancers (Heidenblad et al.), and the characterization of putative new signaling mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of diseases such as multiple sclerosis and diabetes (Avasarala et al.).

These articles also demonstrate the broad range of genomic techniques that fall within the scope of the journal, such as expression profiling (Avasarala et al.), array CGH (Heidenblad et al.), tissue microarrays (McDonnell et al.),  proteomic technologies (Gast et al.) and SNP genotyping using arrayed primer extension (Podder et al.).

BMC Medical Genomics is edited by a team of in-house and Associate Editors and supported by an impressive international Editorial Board.  As with the other medical journals in the BMC series, BMC Medical Genomics will use open peer review; the names of the peer reviewers will be known to the authors and the reports will be made public alongside the published article.

If you would like to be involved in the journal as a reviewer, Editorial Board Member, or Associate Editor, please contact us.

Scott Edmunds
Senior Assistant Editor
BMC-series Journals

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