Nano/bio interface:impact on drug delivery applications.

With the advent of the rapidly growing field of nanotechnology that has ushered new opportunities to develop multifunctional biomedical nanoparticles, nanoscientists are learning about the extraand intracellular interactions with these nanoparticles. This special issue of Drug Delivery and Translational Research is dedicated to publishing selected deliberations relating to drug delivery in the first NanoBio Collaborative International Conference 2012 (NBCIC 2012) that was organized by the University of South Florida Nanomedicine Research Center and was held in March 22–24, 2012. The goal of this conference was to promote closer research ties and networking opportunities within the nanoscience community of the State of Florida and to foster and encourage collaborative research efforts among national and international centers of excellence in nanotechnology. NBCIC 2012 brought together engineers, chemists, physicists, biologists, and clinicians from across the globe to discuss recent advances, opportunities, and barriers in nanoscience and nanotechnology and its applications to diagnosing and treating disease. The conference was comprised of several symposia, including nanobioengineering applications, cell technologies and regenerative medicine, theranostics, nanodrug delivery, and translational nanomedicine. This special issue presents four state-of-the-art reviews and four research articles highlighting the application of nanotechnology to drug delivery that were discussed in the conference. Sir Harold Kroto, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (1996), was a Keynote Speaker discussing his vision of nanoscience and nanotechnology in the twenty-first century and has written a preface for this issue. He provided examples of technology use in the future from medicine and molecular electronics to civil engineering. Expanding on medical applications, he stated “the drug industry has focused on the production of relatively simple molecules... these molecules are now highlighting incredibly exciting new directions for molecular biological research and challenging new perspectives for pharmaceutical research and development”. The last decade has seen progress in development of biomaterials for tissue engineering applications; however, self-assembling peptide scaffolds especially for delivery of drugs to injured tissues or organs have been poorly investigated. The first review by Veronica et al. reviews the application of self-assembling peptide scaffolds as an innovative platform for drug and cell delivery to restore cardiac tissue after myocardial infarction. Targeted drug delivery has been the holy grail of cancer therapy. The review article byYin et al. discusses cyclodextrinbased supramolecules, polymers, and nanoparticles bearing targeting moieties such as folates, estrogens, carbohydrates, and peptides as a promising drug delivery system. While effective delivery of therapeutics to the central nervous system (CNS) remains a formidable challenge, the article by Shah et al. reviews the major barriers to CNS delivery and nanotechnology-based solutions for effective drug delivery to the CNS. The article discusses different forms of nanoparticlebased drug delivery systems with emphasis on different modes of delivery to the brain and their safety issues. Last but not least, theranostic nanoparticles that combine both therapeutic and imaging modalities has the promise to revolutionalize diagnosis, treatment, and post-therapy monitoring. The review of Howell et al. summarizes recent developments in theranostic platforms, their advantages and disadvantages in the diagnosis and treatment of various S. Mohapatra (*) Department of Molecular Medicine, and USF Nanomedicine Research Center, Morsani College of Medicine, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA e-mail: smohapa2@health.usf.edu