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Molecular Endocrinology—From Birth to 20th-Year Anniversary

Thompson Professor and Chair, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 70030

When I assumed the presidency of The Endocrine Society in 1985, I was searching for some new projects to suggest to the members during my administration. At that juncture, the Society membership was quite a bit smaller and was run with only a few administrative employees. The size and structure of the Society made it possible to move it in new directions more easily. My number one pet project was to see the creation of a new journal featuring molecular endocrinology. I felt the time was ripe for this, as did a small cadre of the other leading molecularly oriented scientists active in our Society.

What was the need for this new journal? Why take a chance on failure? Well, the reasons were multiple. First, the time had come for substantiating this new field of molecular endocrinology. It was clearly here to stay—and The Endocrine Society was the logical choice to be a leader in its validation because it was the primary society in which the field originated and developed. The advances of the early 1970s in hormonal regulation of gene transcription and expression and the advent of recombinant technology had promoted the entrance of many new workers in this nascent field, and the Hormone Action Gordon Conferences of the 1970s provided the early format for organization of newly generated concepts from the field. Clearly, the field of steroid hormone action and nuclear receptors served as the original foundation for molecular endocrinology, but it was evident that peptide hormone receptors and many other factors (insulin, growth factors, cytokines, etc.) were poised for in-depth study of their molecular mechanisms. In fact, the molecular endocrinology field was merging with the fringes of the transcription, chromatin, replication, and cell biology fields to form new groups and meetings where exciting new concepts were being advanced. Receptors were being purified, receptor activation mechanisms were being proffered, promoters were under intense investigation, nuclear receptors were being cloned, and we were achieving new understandings of the intracellular signaling interactions and pathway crosstalk that would prove so important for our current understanding of cell physiology and pathology.

Despite the clarity of the decision in my own mind and in that of many of my "hormone action colleagues," a new journal of any kind originally was a tough sell to the members of the Publications and Finance Committees, who felt it could be unwise to alter the status quo of the Society’s publications, which were solid and profitable at the time. Obviously, the Society was not as flush with backup cash in those days, and a new journal would cost the Society money in the short term, and the extent of its success was uncertain in the minds of some. Nevertheless, with the eventual strong support of the elected Endocrine Society Council, we passed a resolution to establish the new journal, selected a critical first editor, Brad Thompson, and we were all off and running with our promising but untested new venture. From that point in time, the Society and the excellent succession of prestigious journal Editors never looked back. Fueled by the explosive expansion of the signal transduction and nuclear receptor/coactivator and transcription fields, and the application of their important discoveries to basic science and clinical medicine, Molecular Endocrinology has established itself as the premier journal of its type in the world.

Happy 20th birthday, Molecular Endocrinology!!

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