Recent Advances in Non-Viral Vectors for Gene Therapy 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 2026 | Viewed by 279
Special Issue Editor
Interests: cancer; infectious diseases; nanoencapsulation; nanomedicine; nanoparticles; new drug delivery systems; polymersome; theragnosis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to invite submissions to this Special Issue, entitled “Recent Advances in Non-Viral Vectors for Gene Therapy and Gene Delivery”. Non-viral platforms have progressed from exploratory formulations to clinically validated vehicles for mRNA and siRNA, while the efficient, tissue-selective delivery of genome editors and antisense cargos remains a central bottleneck. Addressing this challenge requires a quantitative understanding of transport across physiological barriers, productive cellular uptake, endosomal escape, and intracellular trafficking, together with manufacturability, stability, and quality attributes that enable translation.
This Special Issue aims to collate mechanism-anchored research that advances the efficacy, specificity, and safety of non-viral gene delivery vectors, positioned within the core disciplines of formulation science, biopharmaceutics, pharmacokinetics, and nanomedicine. We welcome submissions of multidisciplinary research that integrates materials design with data science, microfluidics, automation, or advanced imaging, encompassing lipid-, polymer-, peptide-, extracellular vesicle-, and inorganic-based carrier platforms.
For this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome to be submitted. Research areas may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Lipid, polymer, peptide, extracellular vesicle, and inorganic carrier platforms;
- Tissue-selective targeting, biodistribution, and barrier traversal in vivo;
- Cellular uptake pathways, endosomal escape mechanisms, and organelle routing;
- Immune interactions, reactogenicity mitigation, and tolerability profiling;
- Scalable manufacturing and CMC, including stability and analytical release testing;
- Microfluidic synthesis, process intensification, and quality-by-design;
- Quantitative PK/PD modeling, systems analysis, and imaging-guided tracking;
- Delivery of CRISPR/Cas systems, base/prime editors, and antisense oligonucleotides;
- mRNA and self-amplifying RNA vaccines, protein replacement, and gene modulation.
I look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Hyun-Ouk Kim
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- non-viral gene delivery
- lipid nanoparticle
- polymeric carrier
- endosomal escape
- genome editing delivery
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