Clinical and Molecular Allergy: a new open access journal that addresses rapidly evolving information in the field of allergy and immunology

The genomics revolution of the 21st century has led to enormous advances in our understanding of allergic and immunological disease. The use of transgenic and knock out methodologies, stem cell biology, gene cloning and sequencing, and high throughput technology has revolutionized medicine. Discovery of families of cytokines and chemokines, novel signaling mechanisms, and of new mediators and inflammatory pathways have led to pivotal insights into the basis of allergic and immunological diseases. This has led to the generation of new treatment strategies such as monoclonal antibodies, cytokine inhibitors, new immunomodulators and gene therapy.At present, there is no journal dedicated specifically to both the clinical and molecular aspects of allergic diseases. In starting Clinical and Molecular Allergy, we hope to present timely reviews and mechanism-oriented reports that will open up new avenues for research and bring together research communities from across the globe. A strong emphasis will be placed on education and timely reviews of molecular diagnostic technology and molecular biotherapeutics, which will constitute an ever-increasing aspect of our existence in the future. Reviews of these areas will allow clinicians to learn and share their experiences and understanding of these advances.Clinical and Molecular Allergy is Open Access meaning it is freely and universally accessible online, it is archived in at least one internationally recognized free access repository, and its authors retain copyright, allowing anyone to reproduce or disseminate articles, according to the BioMed Central copyright and licence agreement [1]. Clinical and Molecular Allergy's articles are archived in PubMed Central [2], the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also in repositories at the University of Potsdam in Germany [3], at INIST in France [4] and in e-Depot [5], the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of all el