At JCB, active scientists direct the peer review of all submitted manuscripts, ensuring the highest standards for quality, timeliness, and relevance to the field of our published papers. We appreciate all of our Board members’ efforts and commitment to the cell biology community. Their experience and passion for cell biology ensures that submitted manuscripts are in the best possible hands during the editorial process.
To adapt to changes in submission numbers in particular fields and to the emergence of new areas of cell biology, we periodically adjust the composition of our Editorial Board. We here announce—and welcome—three new members of the JCB Editorial Board. We look forward to working with them in the years ahead.
Cédric Blanpain received his MD/PhD from the University of Brussels, Belgium. His interest in stem cells (SCs) began during his postdoctoral work with Elaine Fuchs at The Rockefeller University, where he developed a new method to isolate hair follicle SCs and demonstrated their multipotency. He also delineated the role of Wnt and Notch signaling pathways in regulating skin SCs. He is now an investigator of the research institute WELBIO (Walloon Excellence in Life Science and Biotechnology) and a researcher of the National Research Scientific Fund (FNRS) at the University of Brussels. His laboratory is studying the role of SCs during development, homeostasis, and cancer. His group has identified the earliest cardiovascular progenitors and the mechanism of their specification during embryonic stem cell differentiation, the cellular origin of touch cells, the sensitivities of different epidermal cell populations to DNA damage, and the cellular origin of the two most frequent skin cancers. PHOTO COURTESY OF FRÉDÉRIQUE SEMET.
Titia de Lange is the Leon Hess Professor at The Rockefeller University in New York. She obtained a PhD in biochemistry at the University of Amsterdam working on trypanosome antigenic variation with Piet Borst and did postdoctoral work with Harold Varmus at UCSF. Her current research focuses on how telomeres solve the end-protection problem. Her laboratory identified a six-subunit protein complex, termed shelterin, that binds to human and mouse telomeres and protects chromosome ends. She uses a combination of cell biological and biochemical approaches in mouse knockout models to dissect the mechanism by which shelterin represses checkpoint activation and prevents DNA repair at chromosome ends. PHOTO COURTESY OF ZACH VEILLEUX.
Ivan Dikic grew up in Croatia, where he trained as a medical doctor. He obtained his PhD in molecular biology from the University of Zagreb while working under the supervision of Joseph Schlessinger at New York University Medical Center. He is currently a Professor at Goethe University Medical School and Director of the Frankfurt Institute for Molecular Life Sciences in Frankfurt, Germany. His research focuses on the role of ubiquitin (Ub), a small protein that is posttranslationally and covalently attached to thousands of cellular proteins. His pioneering work led to the demonstration that Ub acts as a multivalent cellular signal recognized by an expanding number of Ub-binding proteins that in turn translate this molecular signal into appropriate cellular phenotypes. His group identified several novel Ub-binding domains and used structural and functional studies to demonstrate their roles in the regulation of DNA repair, inflammation, receptor endocytosis, and proteasomal degradation. He has recently described mechanisms by which linear ubiquitination can regulate the NF-κB pathway and apoptosis. His current interests focus on selective autophagy, which is essential for the clearance of protein aggregates, pathogens, and damaged mitochondria from the cell. PHOTO COURTESY OF FMLS.
