Special Issue “Biomimetic Catalytic Systems for Pharmacokinetic and/or Pharmacodynamic Processes”

A Special Issue “Biomimetic Catalytic Systems for Pharmacokinetic and/or Pharmacodynamic Processes” (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/catalysts/special_issues/biomimetic_catalytic) is being organized in Catalysts, which received an updated Journal Impact Factor of 4.146 in the recent release of the Journal Citation Reports®. The 5-year Impact Factor was 4.399. /Catalysts/ now ranks 67/162 (Q2) in the category ‘Chemistry, Physical’.

Guest Editor: Dr. György Tibor Balogh 

Keywords

Macromolecular systems in the living organism (such as proteins, lipids, lipid-protein, nucleic acid) provide unique points of interaction for both endogenous and exogenous compounds, including drug molecules. Due to the complex interactions, the physicochemical, structural and chemical properties of the interacting molecules can also change significantly. These interactions can lead to altered reactivity (or catalytic activity in enzyme catalyzed transformations) and conformation, the stereochemical properties and chemical entity of these guest compounds are also changed. These processes related to biologically active agents are the subject of pharmacokinetics. Of course, these changed physicochemical and chemical patterns could have greater or lesser effect on the physiological processes, which is a demanded pharmacodynamic response of drug compounds.

Regarding, that the above mentioned processes mainly based on complex biotransformations are much more complex than most known simple chemical and catalytic processes, mimicking and modeling these biological systems is an important area in the development of sustainable and green bio-and chemical processes. The so-called biomimetic systems are able to substitute the real biotransformation in they can be effectively applied for homogeneous or heterogeneous systems as well. Among them, catalysts systems, which are able to mimic specific enzyme actions, have growing attention in many research field. Due to the fact that biomimetic catalyst systems are sensitive, difficult to synthetized and particularly expensive in many cases the effective and sustainable application of them has serious limitations. The rational design of chemical structure of the biomimetic catalyst and the fine-tuning of biomimetic reaction media or the development of catalyst immobilization techniques can provide solutions for these problems. Taking into account the potential industrial advantages of biomimetic systems and the research interest, this area enjoys special attention in the field of catalyst carrier or reactor development. As a straightforward approach, novel nanocarriers, composite carriers and nano-or micro reactor systems has also a great interest in the improvement  of biomimetic catalytic systems in the development of nanocarrier, composite systems.

The well-designed biomimetic model systems can be a unique alternative tool to describe and explore physiological biotransformations such as metabolism, specific tissue- or cell-targeted drug delivery or action of APIs on sensor molecules.

In accordance with the above, special issue is expected to present biomimetic/biocatalyst systems for biotransformation processes and therapeutic and diagnostic solutions related to drug-biomacromolecule interactions, typically related to pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics.

• Biomimetic catalytic systems
• Enzyme related biomimetic transformation
• Regio- and enantioselective reactions
• Chemical models for ADME processes
• Biomimetic sensor systems
• Homogenous and heterogenous systems
• Batch and continuous flow processes
• Microfluidic and lab-on-a-chip system