Polymer Biomaterials for Immune System Modulation
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Materials Science".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2019) | Viewed by 11035
Special Issue Editors
Interests: innate immune system; chemokines; nanomaterials; nanobiointeractions; adjuvants
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Immune system (IS) activation may represent a major obstacle for drug delivery and pharmaceutical treatments in general; even when it is part of a beneficial outcome (e.g. vaccines), and the details of the response are critical to achieve a therapeutically valid target. Therefore, the possibility of modulating IS responses is a necessary component of precision medicine, allowing us to increase or decrease inflammatory processes in a fashion dependent on the therapeutic peculiarities.
For example, the efficacy of a given drug could be improved by using (nano)materials that hijack leukocytic machineries and upregulate specific processes, including cytokines or endo/phagocytic pathways. Biodegradable polymeric (nano)materials from synthetic or natural sources are advantageous in the tunability of their biological interactions through chemical/processing variables, which affect biocompatibility, (enzymatic) degradability, biodistribution and extracellular targeting, internalization and intracellular localization, the kinetics of drug release and transcription factor activation.
This Special Issue will welcome contributions ranging from materials design and processing (synthesis, functionalization, size control, microfluidics), through in vitro studies (new in vitro models, multicellular, 3D, microfluidics), to in vivo administration (pharmacokinetics, therapeutic outcomes), and will specifically focus on the immunological issues that accompany the use of (nano)materials and how the latter can influence them. This will include, but will not be limited to, studies aiming at dendritic cell targeting and vaccine development, topical and systemic anti-inflammatory therapies, cancer immunity applications, wound healing and angiogenetic processes.
Dr. Giuseppe Bardi
Prof. Nicola Tirelli
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- Polymers
- Nanoparticles
- Microparticles
- Matrices
- Precision medicine
- Regenerative medicine
- Drug delivery
- Immune system
- Inflammation
- Drug conjugates
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