Inhalational Drug and Vaccine Administration for Combating Infectious Diseases

Dear Colleagues,

It is important in the time of pandemics to be able to deploy large numbers of vaccines or therapeutic drugs that can be easily self-administered, decreasing the burden on health-care systems, which can be short staffed, as we have witnessed during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Inhalation therapeutics and vaccines are gaining more and more attention as a non-invasive self-administrable alternative to injections, especially for respiratory tract diseases.

Inhalable drug and vaccine delivery systems offer many advantages in combating respiratory tract infections, being non-invasive, localized drug administration, eliciting mucosal immunity and tissue resident T cells. This Issue aims to capture the worldwide efforts in developing effective therapeutic or prophylactic inhalable delivery systems (dry or liquid), able to deliver drugs or vaccines to the respiratory tract, allowing non-invasive means and self-administration of vaccines, which can minimize the need for trained health-care providers and needles along with their hazards. Dry powder inhalation can offer superior thermostability, especially for thermolabile vaccines, adding a further dimension to the delivery system. Mucoadhesive and other techniques can prolong the lung residence time, which can help in sustained drug/antigen release, allowing for higher efficacy and lower toxicity. All original studies and reviews presenting research in relation to inhalation drug delivery systems and particularly for lung infectious diseases in humans and domestic species are welcome. Please do not hesitate to submit. 

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome.

Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following: Inhalable vaccines; inhalable drugs; respiratory tract infections; spray-dried particles; spray-freeze-dried particles; thermostability; dry powder inhalation; aerosol inhalation.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Moustafa T. Mabrouk
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 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. Vaccines 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 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.

• inhalable vaccines
• inhalable drugs
• respiratory tract infections
• spray-dried particles
• spray-freeze-dried particles
• thermostability
• dry powder inhalation
• aerosol inhalation