Foreword

The 36th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology, Japan (APSTJ) was held in Tokushima (online), Japan, May 13–15, 2021. In this meeting, we organized a symposium. The theme of the symposium was “New modalities and strategies in drug delivery and discovery.” We as organizers invited some young researchers, who belong to Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Tokushima University. We further invited them to submit their review articles for publication in Current Topics in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Bulletin and all kindly accepted our invitation. In this Current Topics section, Dr. Noriko Saito-Tarashima et al. describe the research to rewrite the central dogma of molecular biology using synthetic genetic polymers. Drs. Masaya Denda and Akira Otaka introduce advances in preparation of peptide and protein thioesters aiming to use in medicinal science. Drs. Mai Inagaki and Masanori Tachikawa summarize the transport characteristics of placenta-derived extracellular vesicles. Dr. Yu Ishima et al. introduce the novel delivery strategy of albumin carrier. Drs. Tatsuya Fukuta and Kentaro Kogure demonstrate utility of biomimetic nanoparticle drug delivery systems to overcome biological barriers. Dr. Taro Shimizu et al. demonstrate the development of B cell-targeted vaccine. Dr. Hidenori Ando and colleagues demonstrate the challenge to deliver liposomal oxaliplatin formulation to solid tumors. These reviews provide wide range of intimate information regarding new modalities and strategies in drug delivery and discovery. As the editors of this Current Topics, we sincerely thank all the authors for their valuable contribution.