Writing this piece for the last issue of Molecular Endocrinology leaves me with mixed emotions. I had the privilege of being a member of Council in 1984 when, under the leadership of President Bert O'Malley, The Endocrine Society began to discuss initiating a new journal devoted to molecular aspects of hormone action. After a long and substantive debate in Council as well as polling of The Endocrine Society members, the Council unanimously approved the new journal. Brad Thompson was selected as the first Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of what, after another lengthy discussion, was named Molecular Endocrinology. Brad invited me to become one of his inaugural Associate Editors, an opportunity I gladly accepted, and I served in this capacity throughout Brad's tenure as EIC. I was then selected as the second EIC and occupied this position between 1993 and 1998. Although I have published a number of papers in the journal over the years, as a matter of principle I did not submit a manuscript to Molecular Endocrinology during my tenure as EIC. As 1997 marked the 10th anniversary of Molecular Endocrinology, however, I convinced the Publications Committee to allow the generation of a special issue commemorating this milestone in the life of the journal. The issue was published in 1997 as volume 11, number 6, and I did contribute to that issue an Editorial presenting my personal view on the history of the field of hormone action and the origins and success of Molecular Endocrinology.
Anthony R. Means, PhD
All one needs do is read the titles and names of the senior authors of papers published in this journal during its first 15–20 years to appreciate what a critical role it played in the growth and maturation of the study of hormone action.
A problem we faced when considering the new journal, and continue to face, is that endocrinology is in the United States primarily a clinical discipline. As such, it is most frequently a division in a department of medicine in United States medical schools. An MD can receive clinical and research training as well as become board certified in endocrinology. Many of our best senior basic scientists who study molecular hormone action began with such training. However, this is clearly not the case for those of us who do not hold an MD. There is no BS, MS, or PhD degree in endocrinology offered at any United States university or medical school. So graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who begin work in this discipline do so because of the interest of their mentors.
My own career path can serve as an example. I have worked on what I consider to be hormone action or “molecular” endocrinology for my entire research career, beginning as a graduate student with Terrell Hamilton at the University of Texas in Austin in 1964. Terrell was trained as an evolutionary, developmental biologist who became interested in estrogen because it could alter sex determination in chicken embryos. Upon my arrival at Austin, Terrell left to undertake a sabbatical leave with J. R. Tata in London. Tata was also a developmental biologist and used thyroid hormone as a tool to investigate tadpole development and differentiation. Thus, neither Terrell nor Tata identified as an endocrinologist, although both used a hormone as a primary research tool. The first papers I wrote in the Hamilton lab, about work done while Terrell remained on leave, were made possible by the invention of the Ultra-Turrax (now known as the Polytron) by Professor P. Willems. This instrument allowed one to fragment even tough tissues like rat uterus without damaging nuclei and isolate functionally intact uterine nuclei. It thus provided an opportunity to demonstrate that estrogen stimulated the synthesis of rapidly labeled nuclear RNA within 2 minutes of its injection into ovariectomized rats. This was the first demonstration of a nuclear effect of estrogen and the most rapid response to this hormone to be shown at the time.
Upon completion of my PhD, I did postdoctoral work with Peter Hall at the University of Melbourne, where I initiated work to elucidate the role FSH played in the male rat. Peter, although an MD by thesis (from Guy's Hospital in London), also did not identify as an endocrinologist. Rather, he considered himself to be a biochemist interested in steroid metabolism and worked primarily on this subject in the adrenal gland and testis. His view was that one should always seek mechanism when investigating a biologically relevant problem, and I have followed this sage advice for these many years. The study of FSH led me to calcium and calmodulin. Tracing the actions of calmodulin rather than of a hormone has made me somewhat of a maverick in The Endocrine Society. That said, in addition to Hamilton, Tata, and Hall, there were many other giants in our field of hormone action who became members of The Endocrine Society but did not identify as endocrinologists. This group included incredibly gifted scientists such as Elwood Jensen, Jack Gorski, Martin Rodbell, Ferid Murad, Al Gilman, and Bob Lefkowitz.
By the early 1980s, the study of molecular events resulting from stimulation of a cell or tissue by a hormone or growth factor had reached a very exciting level indeed. We knew of and had isolated numerous steroid and transmembrane receptors, identified transcriptional, and translational effects of steroid and protein hormones and begun to appreciate the important roles of intracellular second messengers such as cAMP, calcium, and soluble lipids in mediating the cascade of molecular events that led to a change in the activity or fate of a cell or tissue. At that time in the history of the study of hormone action, the only The Endocrine Society journal devoted to basic science was Endocrinology, and most its pages were filled with excellent science of a physiological nature. So launching a journal dedicated to molecular details of hormone action could not have come at a more opportune time for the Society or my likeminded colleagues. All one needs do is read the titles and names of the senior authors of papers published in this journal during its first 15–20 years to appreciate what a critical role it played in the growth and maturation of the study of hormone action. That said, playing my maverick role, I was never in favor of the title chosen for the journal. I opined that a title like Hormone Action, Molecular Hormone Action, or Cell Signaling Mechanisms would have captured the interest of trainees and readers, and even encouraged new trainees and PIs who might not fit the definition of endocrinologist to enter this exciting field of research.
As time has passed, more and more members of The Endocrine Society who pursue basic, discovery-based science lost interest in the hormone per se and chose to investigate molecules identified as lying downstream of the stimulus in a hormone-mediated cascade of events. Recall that our trainees are not formally trained as endocrinologists but began work in this discipline because of the interest of their mentors. Then consider the many scientific meetings that a trainee pursing the basic science of hormone action had (and has) the opportunity to attend. Most of these meetings are on specialized topics such as nuclear receptors, membrane receptors, cyclic nucleotides, calcium, lipid second messengers, proteins kinases, protein phosphatases, etc. It is therefore not surprising that many trainees prefer to attend such specialty meetings, where they can immerse themselves in their own area of research and meet the standard-bearers in an intimate setting, over a large, annual societal meeting such as ENDO. For all these reasons, publishing papers in The Endocrine Society journals like Molecular Endocrinology began to decline, and I suspect this decline will continue regardless of what journal publishing options the Society pursues in the future.
The field of molecular hormone action (or molecular endocrinology) continues to evolve in extremely exciting ways that are leading to the development of new therapeutic agents. We are now immersed in “big” science, where most papers have an “omics” component as well as multiple authors and report the application of these techniques to investigate cleverly chosen animal model systems. I sincerely believe this evolution will continue for some time, and as progress occurs, researchers will seek new, impactful, and highly open-access publishing opportunities to reach as large and diverse an audience as possible. Research must change with the times to remain current. As times have changed, several highly visible and successful venues for reporting the results of studies on hormone action have been discontinued, including the Laurentian Hormone Conference and the Gordon Research Conference on Hormone Action. Molecular Endocrinology becomes the latest of these vehicles to go, and with its demise, an exciting and meaningful era of opportunity in the reporting of molecular hormone action research has ended. However, I feel confident that our chosen field will continue to produce outstanding and important discoveries in basic science.
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Acknowledgments
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