Celebrating 50 Years of Excellence in DMD Science

This issue of DMD marks the beginning of a year-long celebration of the 50 anniversary of the journal. The content of the first (Jan–Feb 1973) issue of DMD consisted entirely of the proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Microsomes and Drug Oxidations (MDO, https://MDO.pharmacy.arizona.edu), which took place in July 1972 at Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. The issue contained 64 articles and was literally a “book,” as it was referred to in the Preface of that issue, written by Ronald W. Estabrook, James R. Gillette, and Kenneth C. Leibman. The contributors to that issue included most, if not all, of the major figures in the drug metabolism field from that period. The Preface also credited the First MDO meeting, held in 1968 at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA, for fueling the rapid growth of the scientific literature in the field of drug metabolism, which in turn led to the establishment of this new journal. The journal was titled Drug Metabolism and Disposition: the biological fate of chemicals, until 2000, when it became just Drug Metabolism and Disposition (DMD). The Editorial to launch the new journal by the founding Editor, Kenneth C. Leibman, was published in the second DMD issue (Leibman, 1973). The Editorial elegantly reviewed the history of drug metabolism studies, quoting Paracelsus and recounting the progression from Buchheim’s student Schmiedeberg to E. K. Marshall, R. T. Williams, and then B. B. Brodie and “the renaissance of interest in drug metabolism and disposition. ” Dr. Liebman credited “the development of still more powerful techniques for the separation and characterization of drugs and their metabolites, and for probes of their molecular interactions with cellular constituents” for the “remarkable advances in our understanding of the fate of foreign chemicals in living matter and of the mechanisms of their biotransformation and translocation,” as well as the pressure to institute “new journals devoted exclusively to this subdiscipline. ” The inaugural Editorial also expressed a wish to make DMD “an instrument of greatest usefulness to the community of workers in the field. ” This noble wish has been an important guiding principle for the journal as it has stood the test of time and become the leading journal in the DMD field. Over the past 50 years, DMD has published nearly 9000 papers. It is the journal of choice for publishing first-rate fundamental as well as translational DMD research, where new trends, regulations, and concepts are introduced, differing opinions are debated, and important works from PhD dissertations and new drug approval pipelines are archived. The topics covered by DMD have evolved along with the rapid changes in the broader biomedical science fields. However, the focus on drug metabolism and disposition has remained true through the past 50 years. Frequency analysis of relevant title words of all papers published in the first 5 years and those published in the past 5 years suggests a dominance of studies on “rats” and “microsomes” in the early years and of studies on “drug”, “humans,” “transport,” and “pharmacokinetic models” in recent years. The words “metabolic” and “cytochrome/CYP” studies appeared to be equally well-represented in both periods (Fig. 1). The success of DMD can be attributed in part to the vision and leadership of its Editors. A total of eight individuals have had the opportunity to lead the journal in the last 50 years, as shown in Table 1. The journal’s success is also due to the combined efforts of everyone else involved, the Associate Editors (AEs), Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) members, reviewers, staff, ASPET Publications Committee and Council, and, perhaps most importantly, our authors, who placed their trust in the journal. Fig. 2 displays the last names that appeared 50 times or more as authors of a DMD article in the past 50 years. Particularly noteworthy are four authors who have published 80 or more papers in DMD (Table 2). Of these, Scott Obach is a current AE; Miki Nakajima is a current EAB member; Yuichi Sugiyama is being featured in a DMD special section on “Mechanism-Based Predictive Methods in Drug Discovery and Development” in 2023; and Curtis Klaassen was featured in a recent special section on “Bile Acids, Drug Metabolism, and Toxicity (https://dmd.aspetjournals.org/content/ 50/4/422). A token of appreciation will be presented to each of them as “Most Prolific Author in DMD” in the near future. Congratulations! A number of special sections and commissioned articles are planned as a special 50 Anniversary Celebration Collection. The current (January) issue contains five papers from this collection. Fred Guengerich wrote an insightful historical as well as future perspective titled “Drug Metabolism: A Half-Century Plus of Progress, Continued Need, and New Opportunities” (Guengerich, 2022). Five former DMD editors (Edward T. Morgan, Raymond F. Novak, James R. Halpert, Eric F Johnson, and Jeffrey C. Stevens) have worked together and contributed unique and valuable perspectives on the evolution of the journal from 1994 to 2020 (Morgan et al., 2022). James R. Halpert and his former associates also provided a historical perspective on “Four Decades of CYP2B Research: From Protein Adducts to Protein Structures and Beyond” (Roberts et al., 2022). Hiroshi Yamazaki and Makiko Shimizu wrote a mini-review on “Species Specificity and Selection of Models for Drug Oxidations Mediated by Polymorphic Human Enzymes” (Yamazaki and Shimizu, 2022). Kerry B. Goralski and colleagues provided an ASPET symposium report on the very timely topic of “COVID-19 Vaccines and the Virus: Impact on Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics” (McColl et al., 2022). 96 1521-009X/51/1/96–98$35.00 dx.doi. org/10.1124/dmd.122. 001179 DRUG METABOLISM AND DISPOSITION Drug Metab Dispos 51:96–98, January 2023 Copyright © 2022 by The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics