Functional Polymers for Targeted Therapeutics and Gene Delivery
A special issue of Pharmaceutics (ISSN 1999-4923). This special issue belongs to the section "Gene and Cell Therapy".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2025 | Viewed by 133
Special Issue Editors
Interests: gene therapy; targeted gene delivery; 3D cell culture; targeted anticancer therapy
Interests: functionalization and purification of biopolymers; controlled drug release; active targeting; microparticles and nanoparticles; polymeric micelles; lipid-based nanostructured systems; polycations; gene therapy; imaging
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Due to the broad types of available polymers and their possible modifications, polymeric materials play a great role in biomedicine. Polymers can have many applications, serving as materials for implants, antimicrobial agents, scaffolds for cell culture in regenerative medicine, as well as carriers delivering nucleic acids or other drugs. Some types of polymers have been shown to be effective in delivering nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), peptides, and other chemical compounds into mammal and bacterial cells. Especially the potential of some polymers for delivering nucleic acids makes them important non-viral vectors, with great potential for being used in many types of nucleic acid-based therapies. Some types of therapy require concentrations of therapeutic factors only in specified tissues or body regions, avoiding other healthy tissues and organs; therefore, recently, a great effort has been made to establish systems and strategies for targeted nucleic acid delivery. In this type of approach, nucleic acid carriers are coupled with specific factors supporting their affinity for certain types of cells. This can be proteins as ligands or antibodies, chemical compounds as hormones and metabolites, or recently, aptamers. Polymer composition and modifications can influence, in variable ways, its properties, which are important factors conditioning their biological features as well as delivering efficiency, toxicity, and affinity to cell types.
This Special Issue aims to highlight the use of polymers and nanoparticles for targeted nucleic acid delivery for gene therapy as well as in delivering other therapeutic agents in other types of targeted therapies.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Łukasz Sieroń
Dr. Emanuela Craparo
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- polymer
- nanoparticle
- nucleic acid delivery
- targeted therapy
- targeted delivery
- gene therapy
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