Fifty Years of Fungi: A Special Issue Honoring the Contributions of Dr. June Kwon-Chung to the Field of Medical Mycology

Dear Colleagues,

Compared to other medically important pathogens, medical mycology is a relatively new field. In fact, Chester Emmons, the first US government medical mycologist, and arguably the father of medical mycology, was perhaps prescient in concluding that fungal infections were widespread and the fungi that caused these infections were ubiquitous. Unfortunately, this belief was confirmed shortly after AIDS became a mainstream infection, and later through more aggressive advances in modern medicine, including organ transplants and chemotherapy, which created patient populations highly susceptible to life-threatening fungal infections.

Kyung Joo (June) Kwon-Chung is a direct descendent of the Emmons lineage and if not the mother of medical mycology, she certainly is in the running for first lady. She joined the Medical Mycology Section of the NIAID Laboratory of Microbiology in 1966 as a visiting fellow under Emmons and eventually became a senior investigator in the NIAID Laboratory of Clinical Investigation in 1973. In 1995, she became the chief of the Molecular Microbiology Section, Laboratory of Clinical Immunology and Microbiology. Prior to working with Emmons, she was a graduate student of Ken Raper at the University of Wisconsin. Raper was involved in early research on Penicillium strain improvement for the purposes of penicillin production, which was crucial to the war effort. Some of his strains are still used today. Her work with Raper centered on characterizing Aspergillus strains, which resulted in the discovery of many new species. Much of this work was included in Raper and Fennell’s monograph, The Genus Aspergillus, which is still an invaluable resource in spite of having been published 50 years ago. In a career that began in the early 1960s (and is still ongoing!) it is doubtful that any medical mycologist, past or present, can claim the breath of Dr. Kwon-Chung’s expertise. Although her early work with Raper put her on the path of classical mycology, she has published original research spanning topics from fungal identification and morphology to molecular mycology, and in diverse research areas ranging from new fungal species discovery and characterization, to genome sequencing. She was one of the founders, and continues to be an organizer of, the International Meeting on Cryptococcus and Cryptococcosis, which first met in Jerusalem, Israel in 1989.

Her career has resulted in her winning virtually every major award in the field of medical mycology, as well as numerous others, including the NIH Director's Award, the Korean Overseas Compatriots Prize for Science, the Medical Mycology's Rhoda Benham Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society for Microbiology, the International Society of Human and Animal Mycology (ISHAM) Award, and the Lucille George’s Award given by the International Society of Human and Animal Mycology. She is well-known throughout the world with a reputation built in part, on the number of people she has trained in her laboratory and supported during their careers, both domestic and foreign.

The Journal of Fungi is pleased to announce a Special Issue honoring June Kwon-Chung for her outstanding contributions to medical mycology. Because of her broad publication record in the field, submissions can be on any topic relevant to medical mycology including, but not limited to, taxonomy, fungal identification, molecular biology, genetics, pathogenesis, and morphology.

Prof. Dr. Brian L. Wickes
Guest Editor

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