Editorial

With increasing interest in new drug and/or vaccine targets for the treatments of skin infectious diseases, this special issue is focused specifically on current advancements in antimicrobial peptides, vaccines as well as novel technologies for detection of skin microbiota [1]. The first paper, by Brigit Schittek, in this issue exemplifies various antimicrobial peptides or proteins (AMPs) in human skins and discusses their roles in a range of skin diseases. These human AMPs are either expressed constitutively like RNase 7, psoriasin or dermcidin or after an inflammatory stimulus like the β-defensins-2 and -3 or the cathelicidin LL-37. The author suggests that AMPs have a therapeutical potential as topical anti-infectives in several skin diseases. The second paper, by Richard L. Gallo, discusses the involvement of Toll-like receptors (TLRs) in the expansion of skin infections and inflammatory diseases, and draws attention to the potential application of TLR agonists or antagonists in various skin diseases. Tom Coenye highlights the biofilm formation of Propionibacterium acnes (P. acnes) and their possible roles in the pathogenesis of acne vulgaris, a common disorder of the pilosebaceous follicles. In the fourth paper, Chun-Ming “Eric” Huang introduces a novel therapy for acne vulgaris. A vaccine targeting a cell wall-anchored sialidase of P. acnes effectively suppresses the P. acnes-induced inflammation, suggesting that the vaccine may be a new modality for treatments of P. acnesassociated diseases. Most importantly, the review introduces a protein molecule (a surface sialidase) that potentially can serve as an anti-acne drug target. The fifth paper, by Yen-Peng Ho, offers specific guidance on the detection of proteins of Staphylococcus species by mass spectrometry-based approaches. The paper emphasizes a direct mass spectrometric analysis of whole pathogenic bacterial cells taken directly from a colony. The paper by Yu-Tsueng Liu reviews the applications of microarray and ultra high throughput sequencing technologies for diagnostic microbiology. The seventh paper, by Jianfeng Zhang, introduces a new vaccine vector using non-replicating Escherichia coli (E. coli) particles overproducing pathogen-derived antigens. The E. coli-vectored vaccines may benefit developing countries since they eliminate the time-consuming and deleterious requirement for the biochemical purification of antigens, the hazard of contemporary adjuvants, and the intrinsic problems associated with needle injections. The final paper in the special issue discusses the antimicrobial activity of histones. The authors speculate that histones may play critical roles as an ancient innate host defense system against pathogens prior to their integration as elements of chromatin structure in eukaryotic organisms. We hope you enjoy reading these papers as we did. Special thanks must go to our reviewers for the special issue. We set ourselves a tight timetable for publication, and this put additional pressure on the reviewers to complete their reviews in a timely fashion. [1] Cogen, A.L.; Nizet, V.; Gallo, R.L. Br. J. Dermatol., 2008, 158, 442-455.