Guest Editor

Welcome to the first special issue of Comparative Clinical Pathology! This issue contains our special section “Method Resources for Clinical Pathologists”. In this issue, I have specifically included several papers which provide a resource of clinical pathology methods for new and established researchers. When conceived, the goal of this section was to provide articles with clear, concise and detailed methodology, for any species, with data which could be used for reference ranges or to highlight the utility of the methodology. During the preparation of this issue, I was also lucky to receive an informative review article on the differences between toxicologic and diagnostic clinical pathology which I hope our readers will find useful.

It is my hope that comparative clinical pathologists of all kinds, academic, contract, veterinary and toxicologic, will enjoy the articles in this special section. I strongly feel that, in order to advance comparative clinical pathology practices, it is important to get practitioners and researchers to share as much detail as possible about the way they analyse samples, on which platforms and even down to the settings where possible. We are used to providing information about the samples we have analysed, but can then scrimp on the analysis detail. This is not necessarily an intentional omission, but publishing more detail should, in theory, make it possible for other labs to replicate the process. Afterall, is not that one of science’s critical steps?

I would be very pleased to have your feedback on this issue or the journal itself; it would be helpful to direct the development of the journal with reader’s suggestions in mind.

Also, we are still looking for articles to put together a Biomarkers issue, particularly articles which compare and contrast the use of newer Biomarker assays with established clinical pathology tests; or discuss the utility of biomarker assays in the pre-clinical/research setting; or have used biomarkers and clinical pathology to provide mechanistic information. If you think your article would be suitable for this issue, please get in contact with the editorial team.