Dear Colleagues,

Natural polymers are being increasingly studied because of their diverse properties and possible use-case scenarios. They are materials naturally occurring in the nature or extracted from plants or animals, and include natural rubber, silk, wool, cellulose, but also chitosan, starch, proteins, and nucleic acids. Recently, the natural polymers produced by bacteria have gained attention such as polysaccharides, proteinaceous compounds, and extracellular DNA. All these materials have very diverse properties, but they all meet the requirements for being classified as sustainable, biodegradable and biosafe. This makes them valuable in a wide array of applications such as: pharmaceuticals, tissue regeneration scaffolds, drug delivery agents, imaging agents, food additives, food contact materials, smart labels and sensors, and cosmetics. However, precisely their variety makes it challenging to appropriately pair the properties of natural polymers with specific applications. In some instances, their characteristics need to be altered or improved, but by considering that they are generally less stable at high temperatures or acidic conditions.

Thus, this Special Issue of Polymers (IF=4.329) is addressed specifically to natural polymers and new natural-based polymers, their characterization, and possible applications, with specific focus on biomedical, food, and cosmetic use-cases, including hazard characterization for risk assessment. We invite you to submit original research and review articles under the title “Natural Polymers for Food and Biomedical Applications”. If you might know colleagues working in this topic and consider them interested in publishing in this special issue, please do pass this invite.

We look forward to your contribution.

Dr. Giorgiana M. Cătunescu
Prof. Dr. Ancuţa M. Rotar
Dr. Carmen R. Pop
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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. Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2700 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.

• food additive
• food contact material
• cosmetic use
• hazard characterization
• biomedical application
• scaffold
• natural biomaterial
• bioactive natural material
• bio-based sensor