Design and Optimization of Pharmaceutical Gels

Dear Colleagues,

The efficacy of many bioactive agents, including drugs, food supplements and vaccines, is limited because of their poor chemical stability, low water solubility, and low oral bioavailability. For this reason, delivery vehicles are being developed to overcome these problems. Among them, because of their high drug loading efficiency, high biocompatibility, and low toxicity, gels have attracted much attention in the fields of drug delivery systems (DDS), such as sustained-release DDS, controlled-release DDS, targeting DDS, and local DDS.

Gels are three-dimensional, semi-solid systems consisting of polymeric matrices. The physicochemical properties of gels, such as physical strength, viscosity, and self-healing ability, can be changed to meet the specific requirements of applications in various fields, such as drug and cell delivery, bioscaffolds, and the modelling of extracellular matrices. In particular, novel gel-based delivery systems (such as intelligent hydrogels, in situ gels, emulsion gels, nanogels, vesicular gels and microgels) that have emerged in recent years can release drugs by specific biological or external stimuli, such as temperature, pH, enzymes, ultrasound, antigens, etc., to achieve precise and local drug delivery. Therefore, gels have broad clinical application prospects, and are anticipated to provide new, effective, and robust strategies for the theranostics of diseases.

The aims of this Special Issue are to shed light on gels of material development, system construction, structural characterization, and the effect for disease treatment, and research on gels with high translational potential is particularly sought after. Original research, reviews, mini-reviews, and perspective papers which reflect the status quo of this topic are warmly welcomed.

Dr. Ying Huang
Dr. Zhengwei Huang
Dr. Xuanjuan Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Gels is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2100 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.