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Current, Future, & Past Issues

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Credit: Peter Harris
YJBM Neurodevelopment & Neurodegeneration

Neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration are intertwined concepts, visualized in the cover for this issue by two neurons. The winding course of each axon maps a face, one young face in magenta and one older face in cyan. These two neurons meet at a synapse in the center of the image, with a surrounding halo of light inspired by the effect of a neon sign glowing in the dark. This electric connection between neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration embodies the brilliant research published in the March 2026 issue. Cover by Peter Harris. Caption by Elaine Yang.

  • June 2026: Gene Therapies and Rare Diseases
  • September 2026: Mitochondria in Health and Disease (submission deadline: Jun 1, 2026)
  • December 2026: Medical Readiness and Health Systems (submission deadline: Aug 1, 2026)
  • June 2027: Sex and Gender (submission deadline: March 1, 2027)

Deputy Editors for March 2026: YJBM Neurodevelopment & Neurodegeneration

Elaine Yang, MD Program, Yale School of Medicine and Devin Juros, Department of Neurology, Yale School of Medicine

Editors' Picks

2026 Issues

  • Neurodevelopment and Neurodegeneration – March 2026This issue explores neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration as intertwined, lifelong processes rather than separate life stages, presenting 12 publications spanning cellular/molecular, systems, computational, and cognitive neuroscience.

2025 Issues

  • Neglected Tropical Diseases and Parasites – December 2025Researachers endeavor to discover basic biological and social characteristics of NTD transmission with the goal of improving the health of populations experiencing NTDs and decreasing their burden of disease.
  • History of Medicine - September 2025This issue explores themes of social justice and community activism, racial and colonial bias in healthcare, conversion therapy and the “queer gene,” psychiatric healthcare and reform, zootherapy, sexism and fertility issues in healthcare, and community-based healthcare services.
  • Epigenetics – June 2025This issue covers epigenetic mechanisms with fundamental and translational perspectives, examining their impact at the level of cells to organisms and communities.
  • Kinase Signaling – March 2025An exploration of the ways in which the study of kinase signaling unites molecular, cellular, and organismal-level perspectives.

2024 Issues

  • Viruses and Autoimmunity – December 2024issue presents eleven manuscripts examining how viral infections contribute to autoimmune disease. Framed around the immune system's need for tight regulation, the issue explores infection as one key driver of autoimmunity, alongside genetic predisposition and environmental factors.
  • Integrative Medicine – September 2024Just like a spectrum of light can be combined into white light, integrative medicine draws from a variety of traditions and practices to tackle mental and physical wellbeing in a way that addresses patients' needs from diagnosis through recovery.
  • Chronic Disease – June 2024This issue features discussions and research findings relevant across the umbrella of chronic disease, uniting topics from patient perspectives to emerging therapeutics.
  • Pregnancy and Child Development - March 2024This issue explores how we can better understand pregnancy's impact on emotional and physical wellbeing, and how outcomes might be improved for the experience that began all our lives.

2023 Issues

  • Cell Fate – December 2023This issue explores novel therapies and treatments for a variety of maladies, from paralysis to cancer.
  • Big Data – September 2023This issue explores the ever-evolving techniques researchers are deploying to grapple with big data and discern critical patterns that have the potential to revolutionize clinical decision-making and patient care.
  • Climate Change and Environmental Health – June 2023This issue addresses both the causes of climate change and the health issues arising from it.
  • Fluids - March 2023From the water we drink to the blood in our veins, our lives depend on a complex and dynamic interplay of fluidic interactions. Understanding the ways in which our bodies create and employ these fluids is vitally important so that we can better diagnose and treat the health issues that stem from them.

2022 Issues

  • Antimicrobial Resistance - December 2022The prevention and treatment of infection by bacteria, parasites, fungi, and viruses is one of modern medicine's greatest accomplishments. However, these microbes undergo constant evolution and increasingly show signs of developed resistances that can overwhelm traditional medication. Understanding these adaptations and discovering new antimicrobial drugs is essential to stave off this threat to global health and development.
  • Bioethics - September 2022Traditionally, bioethics comprises overlapping moral and ethical concerns regarding biology, medicine, and technology, and their intersections. This issue highlights a few important themes under the umbrella of bioethics.
  • Vaccines – June 2022Various methods of inoculation, variolation, and immunization have been used for hundreds of years as a proven prevention of serious illness. Today, vaccination is one of our best tools in the suppression and eradication of many diseases; most notably and recently, illness caused by the COVID-19 virus.
  • The Science of Stress - March 2022This issue explores stress as experienced across humans, non-human animals, and even plants, framed by the twin crises of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. Stress is presented as a major risk factor for both mental and physical health problems, from anxiety and depression to heart disease.

2021 Issues

  • Rare Disease - December 2021This issue focuses on rare diseases and the challenges they present.
  • Health Equity - September 2021This issue addresses disparities including but not limited to racial and gender differences in care, the urban/rural divide, and unequal hospital access using history as a lens to frame ongoing structural inequities in the U.S. healthcare system.
  • Zoonotic Disease - June 2021This issue examines zoonotic disease, framed by the growing intersection of human and animal health as the human population expands and occupies more of the Earth's land. It explores the risks this poses not only to livestock and farmers' livelihoods but to public health more broadly, reflecting the timely relevance of the topic during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, itself believed to have zoonotic origins.
  • Preventive Medicine - March 2021This issue covers the different facets of preventive medicine from the well-established community outreach measures, epidemiological studies from across the world, to re-imagining how to combat racism in the world of preventive medicine. This issue will allow you to see the importance and silent beneficial work preventive medicine provides to create a better world for all of us.

2020 Issues

  • Allergic Diseases and Type II Immunity - December 2020This issue focuses on allergic diseases and type II immunity, noting that the rising global incidence of allergic conditions has turned many ordinarily harmless elements of daily life into potential life-threatening health risks.
  • Sex and Reproduction - September 2020This issue focuses on sex and reproduction, noting that despite greater transparency and awareness around sexual and reproductive health concerns, women and sexual/gender minorities continue to face barriers to care.
  • Medical Education - August 2020This issue focuses on medical education, framed around the idea that as medical knowledge continues to grow and evolve, so too must the methods used to teach it to the next generation of doctors and nurses. The issue highlights new technologies, methods, and perspectives that offer opportunities to improve how medicine is taught, spanning the many settings in which medical training takes place.
  • Plant-based Medicine and Pharmacology - June 2020This issue focuses on plant-based medicine and pharmacology. The issue’s diverse selection of literature provides a platform for increased cross-talk between clinical, basic science, and population-based studies, addressing some of the missing links in the field.
  • Skin - March 2020This issue focuses on the skin, gathering articles that approach the topic from public health, medical, and molecular perspectives.

2019 Issues

  • Death - December 2019This issue explores the concept of death from multiple angles (biological, ethical, medical, and legal) and examines the phenomenon at both the cellular and organismal level. Coverage spans topics from the fundamental biology of cell death and desiccation (a form of dormancy sometimes called "life without water") to broader questions about mortality, poisons, and the legal and ethical dimensions of end-of-life decisions.
  • Organelles - September 2019The issue explores individual organelles and their functions in depth, including features on the mitochondria (the cell's energy-producing double-membrane organelle) and the nucleus (the large double-membrane structure that houses the genome and does far more than simply store DNA).
  • Clocks and Cycles - June 2019This issue focuses on biological rhythms, from circadian clocks to sleep-wake cycles. Coverage includes research on circadian entrainment, such as a study on manipulating rhythm waveforms using light-dark manipulations in male Syrian hamsters, and a review examining the connection between the circadian clock and the immune system. The topic reflects the broader daily progression each of us experiences between wakefulness and sleep, and how our internal biological timing systems govern that transition.
  • Attention Science - March 2019The issue explores the science of attention, examining how humans navigate an ever-growing stream of information in daily life.

2018 Issues

  • Ecology and Evolution - December 2018The issue explores the evidence that shows life's diversity shares common origins shaped by the selective pressures inherent in each species' relationship to its environment.
  • Medical Technology - September 2018This issue focuses on medical technology, examining innovations in the field from engineering and clinical perspectives.
  • Nutrition and Food Science - June 2018This issue spans a wide range of topics across vastly differing scales, ranging from cellular metabolism to large scale industrial economic systems of food production and distribution in today’s increasingly global world.
  • Sensory Biology and Pain - March 2018This issue focuses on sensory biology and pain, examining how our sensory systems function, how they can become dysfunctional, and the various methods researchers use to study them.

2017 Issues

  • Gene Editing - December 2017This issue focuses on genome editing, noting that new discoveries and techniques have led to a wide variety of tools for precision editing of DNA, revolutionizing the field. As these tools continue to be refined and new ones developed, their applications are expected to become increasingly widespread.
  • Comparative Medicine - September 2017This issue focuses on comparative medicine, a discipline aimed at deriving benefit from commonalities shared between distinct species. By applying certain animal models of disease to humans in translational research, the field seeks a more holistic understanding of disease processes across species.
  • Infectious Diseases - June 2017This issue presents fifteen articles covering a representative collection of infectious agents currently relevant in the United States — a deliberate narrowing, since the field of infectious disease spans far too many pathogens to cover in a single issue.
  • Drug Development - March 2017This issue focuses on drug development, from initial discovery to final approval and marketing.

2016 Issues

  • Epigenetics - December 2016This issue focuses on the topic of epigenetics, the study of heritable phenotypic traits not encoded by the genetic sequence. Our understanding of epigenetics is far from complete, with novel discoveries and new insights evolving rapidly. We hope the articles in this issue convey the broad implications of epigenetic mechanisms and highlight the fascinating research and promising future work for the field.
  • The Microbiome - September 2016This issue covers a variety of microbiome-related topics, ranging from microbiomes at various body sites and virus-focused microbiome to the technological and ethical challenges that microbiome research faces in general. Some of the articles also shed light on the therapeutic potential of leveraging the human microbiome in treating different conditions such as obesity and anxiety.
  • Sex and Gender Health - June 2016This issue covers a wide range of themes related to sex and gender health including physical and mental health, reproductive health, biases in clinical practice, and interventions to achieve sex and gender equality. By decreasing sex and gender biases in both preclinical and clinical research, we can acknowledge the healthcare of a more inclusive population and better understand the differences or lack of differences between sexes and genders.
  • The Aging Brain - March 2016In this issue, we aim to increase our understanding of the biological pathology affecting the aging brain as well as explore the external influences that may improve patients’ quality of life.

2015 Issues

  • Personalized Medicine - December 2015This issue focuses on personalized medicine and the promises it holds for the future of disease prevention and treatment. Articles cover topics ranging from a historical overview of how the field came into existence to the challenges of funding rare disease research, from improved diagnosis of common disorders to better understanding addiction and how to treat it.
  • Addiction - September 2015This issue presents articles on a variety of topics related to addiction in order to provide an informative, well-rounded depiction of drug and alcohol use, maladaptive behaviors, and potential policies and treatments related to addiction.
  • A Multifaceted Battle Against Cancer - June 2015This issue includes several articles that focus on a wide range of topics related to cancer to provide insight into the remaining challenges in our war against cancer.
  • Autism Spectrum Disorders - March 2015This focus issue on Autism Spectrum Disorders includes articles that highlight the interdisciplinary nature of the study of autism pathogenesis and treatment, including three reviews.