Nanotechnology is an area of manipulation/construction of materials in nanometer size range. The advent of the nanotechnology has radically changed the face of drug delivery research since the last two decades. The nanotechnology has shown promise to efficiently and precisely deliver the drug at the site of action and can enable drug entry to hitherto uncharted physiological destinations. Several nanoscale technologies/carriers have been investigated for improving therapeutic performance of drugs, proteins, peptides, and genes and for almost all routes of administration. Promise of nanocarriers to augment the physical, chemical, and physiological stability or solubility of the encapsulated therapeutic entity and to modulate its physiological, cellular, and subcellular transport offering greater targeting and/or lesser side effects has been successfully evaluated and demonstrated.

However, like any technology, real success of the nanotechnology can only be exploited should the bench scale innovations translate to the commercial pharmaceutical product. Translation of the nanotechnology from bench to pharmaceutical market is very challenging as it has to circumvent all the clinical and regulatory hurdles in addition to the process and scale-up related hurdles. It is noteworthy that the lag time between scientific discovery and commercialization of liposomes was greater than two decades. The translation process of nanocarriers from bench to commercial scale requires strategic collaboration of different disciplines from material sciences, drug delivery, engineering and instrumentation, analytical methods, and packaging to clinical and regulatory affairs. Parallel advancements in these disciplines will surely reduce the lag time of next generation nanocarriers to reach from bench to bedside.

The present issue would mainly focus on the developmental, technological, and clinical aspects of various nanotechnologies/nanomedicines and nanotechnology-based products which have reached pharmaceutical market or are being evaluated in clinical trials. Topics for manuscripts, case studies, and reviews include, but are not limited to:

• Developmental aspects and clinical success of the commercialized pharmaceutical nanotechnologies
• Barriers for commercialization of pharmaceutical nanotechnologies
• Recent clinical trial data of the nanotech product
• Novel fabrication techniques or approaches that improve scale-up and translation of established nanotechnology
• Research on nanoparticulate formulations with proven efficacy in larger animals

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jdd/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: