Announcements

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Cristina Bosetti has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of Pharmacoepidemiology (ISSN: 2813-0618, https://www.mdpi.com/journal/pharmacoepidemiology).

Since 2017, Dr. Cristina Bosetti has been Director of the Head Unit Cancer Epidemiology, Laboratory of Methodology for Clinical Research, Department of Oncology, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS, Milan, Italy. She worked as a research fellow at the Laboratory of Mother and Child Health (1996-1997), the Laboratory of General Epidemiology (1998-2004), and the Department of Epidemiology (2005-2016) of the Mario Negri Institute. She has been a visiting scientist at: the Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL), Barcelona, Spain (June 2010); “Life style and cancer group”, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), Lyon, France (Oct 2009); “International Epidemiology Institute”, Rockville, MD, USA (2002-2009); Unit of “Field and intervention studies”, IARC, Lyon, France (Sept. 2000/June 2001); Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA (Sept-Nov 1998).

Her main field of interest is the epidemiology of cancer and other chronic conditions. In particular, she has extensive experience in the conduction and analysis of observational studies investigating the role of lifestyle habits, personal and familial medical history, use of drugs, hormonal and reproductive factors, and other environmental exposures on cancer and other chronic conditions; the analysis of temporal trends and geographic patterns of mortality and incidence from cancer and other chronic conditions; the conduction of systematic reviews and meta-analyses on various environmental exposures and disease risk; the conduction of pharmacoepidemiologic studies; and the conduction of clinical studies in the field of pain treatment and palliative care. She has participated in research projects supported by the Italian Association for Research on Cancer (AIRC), the Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA), the Italian League Against Cancer (LILT), and the European Commission (EC). Moreover, she is a member of the following international consortia: Bladder Cancer Consortium (BLADDER), International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology (INHANCE), and Pancreatic Cancer Case-Control Consortium (PANC4). She has authored/co-authored over 422 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals cited in PubMed/MEDLINE (H-index: 81).

The following is a short Q&A with Dr. Cristina Bosetti, who shared her vision for the journal with us as well as her views on the research area.

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take on the role as its Editor-in-Chief?

What attracted me is the possibility to contribute in an active way to a new journal, specifically focused on pharmacoepidemiology. There are, in fact, only a few scientific journals in this field, but there is an increasing necessity to publish data on the utilization and effects of drugs conducted on large numbers of individuals, for integrating the evidence from clinical trials. Therefore, I believe this new journal is a good opportunity for many researchers working in this field and I am pleased to collaborate in its launch as an Editor-in-Chief.

2. What is your vision for the journal?

The journal should give space to epidemiologic studies conducted in the real world on the beneficial effects of drugs on the population and their potential adverse effects, in order to integrate the evidence from clinical trials. The journal should consider studies focused on many pharmacological treatments for which there is the need to provide novel and up-to-date data, conducted in a rigorous way, using proper but also innovative (epidemiologic) methods to answer the research questions in the best way possible. The studies will span from clinical pharmacology and epidemiology and will be focused on understanding the determinants of beneficial and adverse drug effects, duration–response relationships, clinical effects of drug–drug interactions, effects of genetic variation on drug effect, and the effects of non-adherence to treatments. Studies on the population-level monitoring for unwanted effects and other safety concerns arising in drugs that are already on the market, as well as studies on the conduct and evaluation of programmatic efforts to improve medication use on a population basis should also be envisaged.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?

Pharmacoepidemiology has been largely developing over the last two decades, and I believe it is a growing field of research, which is envisioned to make further progress in the near future. This is also thanks to the availability of large and integrated healthcare data, which include clinical and pharmacological information on a large number of patients, routinely collected for clinical but also administrative purposes.

4. What do you think of the development of open access in the publishing field?

Open access journals offer the possibility of making research available to institutes and countries, mainly in the developing world, which cannot afford to pay for journal subscriptions. Thus, it will make research findings more accessible. It is important, however, to avoid the risk that payment for the publication of a scientific manuscript necessarily implies that the paper should be published independent of its quality.