Masao Omata, Honorary Professor at the University of Tokyo, Has Joined Hepatoma Research as Our Honorary Editor-in-Chief

From February 15-19, 2017, the twenty-sixth annual meeting of the Asian Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver (APASL) was held at the Shanghai International Convention Center in China. Lisa Huang, the Managing Editor of Hepatoma Research (HR) and Assistant Editors Coco Kou and Bonnie Wang attended the meeting to promote the journal.

The conference organizing committee invited the "Grandfather of international hepatocellular carcinoma research", Masao Omata, honorary professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan, to deliver a speech on the latest research progress in the field of hepatocellular carcinoma for scholars and researchers from all over the world. The speech "Staging and Treatment Algorithm: APASL Guidelines for HCC" was endorsed and praised by the participants.

The assistant editors from HR listened to Professor Omata's speech and communicated with him after the lecture, informing him about the Editorial Committee and the current ongoing situation of open access, continuous publication and timely global promotion. They invited Professor Omata to be Honorary Editor-in-Chief of HR. After listening carefully to our report, Professor Omata firstly hailed HR's achievements in the last two years since its establishment in April 2015. He also confirmed that the articles published in HR cover all fields of hepatoma and that HR provides a unique platform of communication for academic researchers and clinicians. Meanwhile, he also hopes that our journal will continue to maintain open access and continuous publication as its twin major characteristics, and that it will keep focusing on international research, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, following up on hot topics, practicing rigorous peer review, while adhering to its policy of publishing only the highest-quality articles as it strives to become a world-class academic journal in the field of hepatoma. Finally, Professor Omata believes that HR possesses excellent positioning and development prospects, so he is very willing to join us as the Honorary Editor-in-Chief to promote liver cancer research and help us create a first-class academic journal.

We believe that with the support of Professor Omata and through the joint efforts of Editorial Board members, Hepatoma Research can look forward to a very bright future.

Professor Omata has made numerous seminal contributions to the fields of gastroenterology, hepatology, HBV and HCV, including the first description of the association between pre-core HBV mutants and fulminant hepatitis (N Engl J Med, 1991), and the extremely high eradication rate of acute HCV by interferon (Lancet, 1991). In addition, his group was the first to document the presence of HBV cccDNA in human samples as a key marker of antiviral resistance (Hepatology, 1985). Other major contributions include the emphasis on a viral etiology for hepatocellular carcinoma in the 1970s in the USA (Gastroenterology, 1979), as well as the first description of “fibrolamellar carcinoma” (Cancer, 1980).