The 50th anniversary of Blood Cells, Molecules and Diseases, 1975–2024

The journal Blood Cells was initiated in 1975 by Marcel Bessis, a French hematologist and cell biologist, as a vehicle for the publication of papers and discussions presented at an international blood club meeting he convened at L' Institut de Pathologie Cellulaire on the campus of Hôpital Bicétre in Kremlin Bicétre, France, a commune on the southern border of Paris. The group met at the Institute for the first time in October 1972. After the first meeting, Bessis published the articles describing the presentations in the Nouvelle Revue d'Hématologie Française, France's principal journal for articles on the science and practice of hematology of which he was the editor. The refusal of the Nouvelle Revue d'Hématologie Française to continue publishing the papers from the meeting of the blood club in English prompted Bessis to start a new journal, Blood Cells, in 1975. Blood Cells, also, began to accept individual submitted papers unrelated to the blood club meeting and, thus, it evolved into a standard journal. A decade later, when Bessis became ill, he asked Brian Bull, a hematopathologist and professor at Loma Linda University School of Medicine in California to assume the position as the second editor-in-chief. He and Bessis had become scientific collaborators and good friends in the preceding years. In 1995, Ernest Beutler, Chair of Molecular and Experimental Medicine at Scripps Research Institute, assumed the editor-in-chief position and transformed the Journal by making three consequential changes. He expanded its title to Blood Cells, Molecules and Diseases, converted its editorial board to past presidents of the American Society of Hematology plus a few additional experimental hematologists of note, a few from abroad, and he converted the Journal to a digital format, hosted on the Scripps Research Institute server. The Journal was the first published solely in a digital format. It, subsequently, was bought by Academic Press, then Harcourt and, then, by Elsevier. The next three editors-in-chief were (i) Marshall A. Lichtman, then Professor of Medicine (Hematology) and of Biochemistry and Biophysics and former Dean of the School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Rochester Medical Center, editor from 2000 to 2013, (ii) Mohandas Narla, then Vice President for Research and Director of The Laboratory of Red Cell Physiology at the New York Blood Center, editor from 2014 to 2021 and (iii) Lionel Blanc, Professor of Molecular Medicine and Pediatrics, Center for Autoimmune, Musculoskeletal and Hematopoietic Diseases, Institute of Molecular Medicine, The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research and the Les Nelkin Professor of Pediatric Oncology Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra-Northwell from 2022 to the present. Although the Journal publishes papers on any aspect of hematology, it has developed a focus on disorders of red cells, erythropoiesis and hematopoiesis. In October 2024, it celebrates its 50th anniversary as a vehicle for the publication of papers in the discipline of hematology.