Launch of a new journal, beginning of a new era

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), chronic diseases (also called Noncommunicable Diseases, NCDs) are of long duration and generally with slow progression. NCDs include mainly cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes, and they are the world's most common diseases. A total of 38 million people die from chronic diseases each year, and almost three quarters of these deaths occur in lowand middleincome countries. Cardiovascular diseases account for most NCD deaths, 17.5 million people annually, followed by cancers (8.2 million), respiratory diseases (4 million), and diabetes (1.5 million). More than 14 million people between the ages of 30 and 70 die each year from NCDs. Among them 85% live in developing countries. As the largest developing country, China has a heavy burden of chronic diseases; there are NCDs 576.3 deaths per 100,000 (males 650.6/100,000 and females 508.5/100,000) in China. One of the hottest topics in the past decade in biomedical sciences is translational medicine, which serves as the bridge between basic research and clinical research. Translational medicine is a rapidly growing discipline in biomedical research and aims to expedite the application of discoveries of new diagnostic tools and treatments by using a multi-disciplinary, highly collaborative, “bench-to-bedside” approach. To best report progress in chronic diseases and translational research we are starting a new journal, Chronic Diseases and Translational Medicine (CDTM, ISSN 2095-882X, CN 10-1249/R). CDTM is owned by the Chinese Medical Association and published by the Chinese Medical Association Publishing House and KeAi (A joint venture of Elsevier and Science Press).