EDITORIAL

Abstract

Dear  Readers,

It is a great pleasure to present to you the new issue of Facta Universitatis Series Medicine and Biology. We welcome in this issue a contribution from Professor Terence Wilkin, who kindly accepted to write for Facta about the evolving concept of his Accelerator hypothesis.

The growing body of information and discoveries based on autoimmune paradigm have not solved the problem of prevention and cure of type 1 diabetes. Professor Wilkin translates reality into science and offers a new concept – that of tempo in diabetes. Accelerators  modulate the tempo of the loss of beta cell function. The Accelerator hypothesis is based on the notion that insulin resistance accelerates beta cell apoptosis, both directly and secondarily by provoking an immune response among those who are genetically susceptible. The logic of the hypothesis is to treat the insulin resistance rather than the immune response, which the hypothesis argues would not occur in its absence. Important support  for the accelerator hypothesis comes from the contemporaneous with the rise in childhood obesity and with it, inevitably, insulin resistance. The clinical phenotypes of  type 1 and type 2 diabetes are converging and obesity could be “the missing link” between two diabetes types.

. . .

Internationally recognized Academician Vladislav Stefanović, an exeptional personality and brilliant scientist passed away on October 11^th, 2015. He was the most successful Editor-in-chief of Facta Universitatis, Series Medicine and Biology, one of the first Academicians of  Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts from Universty of Niš, and one of the first Professor Emeritus. His enormous achievements inspire us and will live on long after him.

His colleague and friend Academician of  Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Momir Polenaković shared with us his memories, his deep sorrow and a profound sense of lost.