s Preface

Current Signal Transduction Therapy will start its 7th year in 2012 and in the past years this journal has had a very important contribution to our understanding the molecular pathomechanisms of various signaling related diseases including cancer, CNS diseases, various inflammatory and circulatory disease. It is generally accepted now that most of the molecular pathomechanisms result from intra- or intercellular communication disorders, while a series of genomic and proteomic changes can be the causes and/or consequences of these communication disorders. The major challenge of signal transduction therapy is to identify the pathologically causative signaling disorders. In a disease state in a pathological cell, a great number of genes can be differently expressed compared to normal cells. On the other hand genomic information alone may be insufficient for identifying specific changes in the molecular pathways that are predictive of a favourable treatment outcome. Although the cause of a disease is frequently an aberration at the genomic level, the functional consequences are mediated via protein networks, with various components of the network undergoing different degrees of activation, usually as a consequence of specific post-translational modifications such as phosphorylation. In the future issues of CSTT, we will put major emphasis on identifying the rate limiting key signaling pathways in the background of various diseases and to investigate the possible interference points with special emphasis on personalized therapy. Current research in the field combines data about genes, proteins, and metabolites to generate a comprehensive picture of the connections between the different parts. In the context of drug discovery, these data can be used to identify the pathways involved in a particular disease -leading to new therapeutic targets - or to determine whether a drug is hitting the intended pathway. On the other hand recently the role of tissue environment in generating and maintaining pathological signaling in a target organ has become a very hot topic. So the 1st issue of the 7th Vol of CSTT in 2012 is dedicated to the role of Astrocytic Signal Transduction in CNS Disease and Therapy. Astrocites contributes significantly to a complex signaling network through intracellular second messengers, and gliotransmitter release that mediates glial-glial and glial-neuron interactions and have very important functions in the maintenance of the neural environment. Dr. Liang Peng Shenyang as the guest editor of this “hot topic” has done a great job in selecting very important and exciting papers on this subject and we trust this will be very well received by the scientific community.