The Guest Editors A.J. Fisher G.M. Verleden G. Massard A.J. Fisher is Professor of Respiratory Transplant Medicine and Honorary Consultant Respiratory and Transplant Physician at the Institute of Cellular Medicine, Newcastle University, and Freeman Hospital, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. He is Secretary of the Lung Transplantation Group in the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Thoracic Surgery Assembly, as well as Chair of the organising committee for two recent ERS 3-day Lung Transplant Courses in Berlin, Germany, in June 2007 and Leuven, Belgium, in June 2009. For the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT), he is Chair of the Education Committee and member of the Scientific Programme Committee 2007–2009. A.J. Fisher heads an active Lung Immunobiology Research Group in the Institute of Cellular Medicine, Newcastle University, focusing on mechanisms of early and late lung allograft injury. He is an Associate Editor of Thorax, and a member of the international editorial board for the journal Transplantation. G.M. Verleden trained in internal medicine, pulmonary medicine and intensive care medicine. He is currently full Professor of Pulmonary Medicine at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and at the University Hospital Gasthuisberg in Belgium. He is responsible for the care of asthmatics and is the medical director of the Leuven Lung Transplant programme, which was initiated in 1991. His research interests are primarily in the area of inflammation of the airways, with particular interest in the role of the airway smooth muscle and the neutrophils in chronic rejection after lung transplantation and the potential role of neo-macrolides to treat this condition. G.M. Verleden is an active member of several international societies dedicated to respiratory and transplantation medicine. He is Chair of the Lung Transplantation Group in the ERS Thoracic Surgery Assembly and of the Pulmonary Council of the ISHLT, and he also serves as scientific secretary for the Belgian Society of Pneumology. G. Massard is Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Universite ´ de Strasbourg, France. At the University Hospital of Strasbourg he is a Surgeon in the Dept of Thoracic Surgery, Vice-chair of the Dept of Pulmonary Medicine and Surgery, and Director of the Lung Transplant Programme. He has been involved with setting up lung transplantation in Russia, where the first successful transplant was performed in 2006 in St Petersburg. G. Massard is committed to education, being External Activities Director of the ERS School Committee and a member of the ad hoc committee for education of the European Society of Thoracic Surgeons, as well as having ongoing involvement in the development of post-graduate education programmes, in cooperation with national, European and Russian scientific societies and with the universities of Omsk and Vladivostok. Eur Respir Mon, 2009, 45, vii. Printed in UK -all rights reserved. Copyright ERS Journals Ltd 2009 European Respiratory Monograph ISSN 1025-448x. vii