Recombinant Therapeutic Proteins for Drug Delivery

Dear Colleagues,

Recombinant therapeutic proteins have gained enormous importance for clinical applications over the past ten years, so much so that they have replaced the original animal-derived version used in medicine. There are two clusters of recombinant proteins: human recombinants that largely replaced animal or harvested from human types, and human recombinants with recombination as their only source. Recombinant proteins are produced through recombinant DNA technology, which involves inserting the gene encoding the protein into expression systems such as bacteria, yeast, or mammalian cells cultures. They include but are not limited to recombinant hormones, interferons, interleukins, hematopoietic growth factors, tumor necrosis factors, blood-clotting factors, thrombolytic drugs, enzymes, monoclonal antibodies, and vaccines. Protein engineering has brought forth a good deal of products with application-specific properties obtained by fusion, mutation, or deletion. Novel, engineered expression systems and integrated technology platforms hold enormous potential for future applications where challenges, primarily related to the pharmacokinetics of artificial recombinant protein drugs, can be overcome by diverging from the original. The development of recombinant proteins capable of entering a cell is a major breakthrough. Such drugs open up completely new opportunities by targeting intracellular mechanisms or by substituting intracellularly operating enzymes. As with other drugs, the efficacy and safety of therapeutic proteins have to be validated in clinical studies, and superiority over available products has to be proven. The Special Issue of Pharmaceutics on "Recombinant Therapeutic Proteins for Drug Delivery" will address diverse areas related to molecular design for drug delivery, targeting and functionalization, genetic manipulation, expression, purification, characterization, post-translational modifications, formulation, safety, stability and efficacy studies, as well as opportunities for the biopharmaceutical industry. Original research papers, communications, or review articles on any of these aspects are welcome for this Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Masaki Otagiri
Dr. Victor Chuang
Guest Editors

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