25 years of research and therapy in arthritis

When it was established 25 years ago by Peter Lipsky and Ravinder Maini, Rheumatology as a speciality, like Cinderella, had just arrived at the ball. Anti TNF therapy was revolutionizing the treatment of not just inflammatory arthritis, but many other immune mediated inflammatory diseases. For the first time people with arthritis could dream of a cure. But to cure a disease requires an understanding of its cause. So two years after we took over as editors in Chief of Arthritis Research and Therapy we outlined how we wanted the new aims and scope of the Journal to be https://biomedcentral-arthritis-research.publicaciones.saludcastillayleon.es/articles/https://doiorg.publicaciones.saludcastillayleon.es/10.1186/s13075-018-1518-y to reflect this desire to aim for a cure. We focussed on two themes we wanted to promote: discovery research and experimental therapy. Since 2018 there has been a revolution in the basic, translational and clinical research that has been considered for publication by the journal, driven by advances in spatial technology and single cell analysis as well as artificial intelligence and bioinformatics. All these approaches have helped expose the mechanisms that drive pathogenicity. The ability to sample human tissue using minimally invasive techniques and to do so over time has allowed our authors to submit manuscripts that explore causal mechanisms in the real model organism; humans, in real clinical studies, rather than having to extrapolate from preclinical models in mice. This combined with the explosion in cell-based depletion strategies using CAR T cell therapies, means that our Journal is well placed to continue to lead the way in publishing outstanding research and new studies that explore novel therapies in arthritis into the next 25 years. To do this will require the continued engagement of our international community of outstanding and expert section editors, associate editors and editorial board as well as the selfless commitment of our reviewers. The new editorial management system (SNAPP: Springer Nature’s article Processing platform) has improved our governance and editorial consistency and enhanced the turnaround rate for manuscripts. It also allows us to monitor plagiarism and malpractice during the submission and review process using state of the art AI systems across the full range of Springer Nature Journals. We want to thank all those colleagues who have helped and continue to help the journal become a trusted, internationally respected journal that expands the boundaries of musculoskeletal disease research.