New Advances in Cationic Polymers for the Delivery of Nucleic Acids

Dear Colleagues,

I am Dr. Jong Yuh Cherng, listed in the World’s Top 2% Scientists in 2021 and 2022 (awarded by Elsevier and Stanford University, USA), and currently work as an Associate Professor at National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan, Republic of China.

I am honored to inform you that I am serving as a Guest Editor of the SCI journal Pharmaceuticals, which attained an impact factor of 4.6 (JCR ranking: 72/277) in 2022. Thus, I am editing a Special Issue entitled “New Advances in Cationic Polymer for Delivery of Nucleic Acids”. The therapeutic potential of using nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) has many clinical applications for the treatment of diseases. To realize this potential, these nucleic acids require vectors with efficacy and efficiency. Substantial attention on the use of non-viral carriers is mainly based on cationic polymers, which have low or absent immunogenicity and are able to transfect a great variety of cells. Moreover, these polymers possess advantages of being versatile in structures, tunable for aims, easy to produce at a large scale with low cost and easy to preserve.

This Special Issue focuses on the physicochemical properties as well as the transfection potential of polymer-based nucleic acid formulations (referred to as polyplexes). New approaches and different polymeric systems with chemical modifications are introduced, and how these polyplexes tackle the cellular barriers, cytotoxicity and low transfection efficiency for a successful expression of delivered genes are demonstrated and discussed. Finally, attention is given to the stabilization of non-viral nucleic acid formulations. In summary, articles in this Issue summarize the current developments of types and components of transfection reagents for the optimization of gene delivery. This set of knowledge would benefit the progress to the development of safe and efficient gene delivery.

If you are working in the areas of chemistry, drug delivery, and the formulation and characterization of drug release and your work fits the theme of this Special Issue, you are invited to contribute to this Special Issue. A peer review of papers will be carried out by members who are experts in the relevant fields. The deadline for the submission of an article is 22nd April, 2024.

Dr. Jong Yuh Cherng
Guest Editor

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. Pharmaceuticals 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 2900 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.