Editorial Membrane Transport: Ionic Environments, Signal Transduction, and Development of Therapeutic Targets

Copyright © 2015 Akio Tomoda et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Membrane transport plays a critical role in producing ionic environments in both intracellular and extracellular spaces that are necessary for cellular signal transduction. The importance of membrane transport implies that any abnormality may lead to pathophysiological conditions and often to specific diseases. This also means that membrane transporters, including ion channels and transporters, are very important therapeutic targets in several diseases such as cardiovascular disorders, hypertension, dementia, metabolic syndrome associatedwith diabetesmellitus, and cancer.Thus, many researchers have been investigating regulatory mecha-nisms of membrane transport with an aim to develop new therapies for treating transport disorders found in variou