Dear Colleagues,

As global warming and climate change prevail, our planet's glaciers, polar ice and permafrosts are melting. Among the serious damaging outcomes and deleterious effects of global warming is the release of a plethora of novel and ancient viruses, bacteria and parasites that threaten human health and survival. Many, perhaps most of the most seriously threatening climate change-associated pathogens (e.g. new variants of influenza, corona, respiratory syncytial [i.e., orthopneumo] virus, and others) penetrate the organism through the oral and upper respiratory cavities. Our immune system - oral immunity and systemic immunity - is called to mount efficient defenses against these biological threats with increasing urgency to attain new states of immune physiological balance.

Concerted work and effort in fundamental and clinical research as well as in industry R&D is timely and critical to develop new and improved nature-based strategies aimed at curbing the process of climate change, and contemporaneously at developing and testing new and effective therapies to improve our oral and systemic immune surveillance against global warming-engendered pathogens. In this light, the journals Natural Resources Conservation and Research and Progress in Immunology are jointly opening the present Call for Papers for this timely and critical Special Issue entitled ''Climate Change, Emerging Pathogens and Nature-Based Strategies: Challenges and Prospects.''

Guest Editors
Professor Emeritus，Ph.D., Dr. End. (h.c.) Francesco Chiappelli
Ph.D., DDS Oluwadayo Oluwadara