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Yinglong Miao, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology and computational medicine, has been named editor-in-chief of npj Drug Discover, part of the Nature portfolio of journals.


Yinglong Miao, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology and computational medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been appointed editor-in-chief of npj Drug Discovery, an open access publication. Dr. Miao will advance the journal’s mission of publishing innovative and high-quality research on all aspects of drug design and discovery.

“Drug discovery is extremely expensive and time consuming for both academia and pharmaceutical industry,” said Miao, “as editor-in-chief, I’m very much looking forward to working with colleagues and experts around the world to promote research in the drug design and discovery, which will eventually benefit human health.”

After postdoctoral research at the University of California San Diego, Dr. Miao joined the University of Kansas in 2017 as assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2022. In 2023, Dr. Miao moved to UNC-Chapel Hill, where his UNC School of Medicine lab combines complementary simulations and experiments to uncover functional mechanisms and design drugs of important biomolecules, including G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), membrane-embedded proteases, RNA-binding proteins and RNA.

“At npj Drug Discovery, we are committed to fair evaluations, fast decisions and preferably constructive suggestions and comments that can help the authors to publish their best exciting work in a timely manner. Our goal is to make the journal a leading platform for researchers worldwide to exchange the latest research in drug discovery.”

Nature is a weekly international journal publishing peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology and has been a top academic venue for science for over 100 years. npj Drug Discovery is part of the Nature portfolio of journals.

Key priorities of npj Drug Discovery include:

  1. Publishing cutting-edge basic science as well as translational and clinical research on drug design and discovery.
  2. Providing a unique forum for members of the drug discovery and design community to disseminate and discuss research findings across a broad range of disciplines.
  3. Highlighting studies involving all stages of drug development, including drug target identification, library screening, lead optimization, animal models and clinical trials.

The journal published a Q&A with Dr. Miao about his research and vision for the journal.