Life and Biology stories with Sooyoung and Others

I have served as a guest editor at Life (ISSN 2075-1729) since my workplace shut down and I lost my job. My workplace, USA Research and Development Center of Neurophth Therapeutics Inc., had decided to close our team when they started aggressively the clinical trial and just before obtaining the Series-C investment. I believe that our early development team actively studied and supported the company’s Business portfolio until our center closed. We, our team built up one center, and we observed as well their closing. Building something up took more time than shutting it down. The closing was quite quicker than I expected.

I met MDPI when I published a review paper, Twenty Years of Anti-Vascular Endothelial Growh Factor Therapeutics in Neovascular Age-Related Macular Degeneration Treatment at the journal of International Journal of Molecular Sciences. I started studying age-related macular degeneration in 2011, when I examined the retina of an aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) knockout. Maybe any molecules in our body will have two sides of the balance– good and bad. Even vitamins and minerals are toxic when they are deficient and plenty. Especially, AhR was very interesting because it is one of important molecules for the balance of the immune system. I studied immunology for my master’s, because I thought that all diseases including brain and retina, had no exception from the immune system, after working as a BS research associate at the section of Neurodegenerative diseases, Korea National Institutes of Health, During mater degree program, I especially studied about NKT and non-classical major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecule in the autoimmune diseases using molecular genetic engineering, animal and cell experiments. After that, I studied several adhesion molecules during brain development during my Ph.D program. My first publication of the first author was spatiotemporal expression patterns of non-clusteted protocadherin family members in the developing rat brain. I studied brain anatomy as well as brain primary neuronal culture with this project. When I came into the USA, I started basic research and translational studies using cells, engineered chemicals, nano-packed small molecules, peptides, antibodies, exosomes, and adeno-associated viruses in retina degenerating animal moldels. Sometimes, I developed new animal models and new analysis methods to test the candidate drugs. Some of them have been published. Many of them have not be published because some did not exhibit good enough efficiency, and some did show too good efficiency to be published ^.^. Actually, good efficiency is a really small piece and small step for the development in the view of company. Sometimes candidate drugs had enough good efficiency but the manufacturing was a hurdle, and some expected fancy drugs had toxicity, killing disease model animals. Synthetic nucleotide engineering was facinating to me, because somehow synthetic nucleotide engineering easily generates antibodies, antibody fragments, AAVs, fusion proteins, and any proteins, and nucleotide sequences could be all changed, and optimized to increase the yields of the proteins and still reduce the immune activation, which nobody knows the detailed profiles before testing them. Research and Development is a really initial step for drug development, but the tiny, tiny things of the early stage development could cause dramatic misfortune and a tragedy in patients’ safety.

To me, taking a role as a guest editor is an honor, and a chance to continue reading and following the field and learn a little other countries — China, Europe, and Eastern Asia, as well as Korea, where I was born, and the USA, where I’m. All the research situations were not the same, really based on the grant money, medical insurance, and the community acceptance based on different countries. While serving Life special edition as a guest editor, what I have learned so far is that we science communities should encourage us to share what we are studying in different countries, giving chances to collaborate and know and understand each other’s scientific environment and situation, and further science should give benefit, fun, hope, and new knowledge to the public.

One thing I have worried in the current science communities is…..

We, even our kids, like Youtube channels, and they check the number of their followers. This kind of behavior could be harmful to the basic scientific world. We scientists pursue grant trends, and check journal impact factors for their survival, but we scientists should remember their own questions, purpose, and fun. We adults, the senior old generation, should allow and help our young generation to pursue their own scientific questions and have trials and errors in our educational system, not only increasing publication records. I worry about our severely competitive academic world where the young generation has no chance for them to pursue their own questions, and not allow enough failure and early lost academic fun in pursuing their own questions.

In the end, I believe, that journals could or should help our science communities to make meaningful research, and promote sharing.

I accepted my role of a guest editor, Life, when I read the Aim and Scope of Life. At least I felt that Life is trying to serve a broad science and public communities, and communities’ questions, and scientific funs. However, I wondered why they decided on a similar journal name to elife: T.T.

If you want to visit Life, click here

If you want to vist the special issue of Retinal Diseases: From Molecular Mechanisms to Therapeutics, click here.

Thank you for reading!!