From Molecular Targets to Therapeutic Reality: Nanomedicine Across Immunity, Metabolic Disease, Neurodegeneration and Beyond

Nanoscale delivery systems such as lipid nanoparticles, polymeric carriers, metal-organic frameworks, dendrimers and carbon-based quantum dots have become clinically validated tools for engaging molecular targets that were previously undruggable. The past decade has produced landmark molecular insights linking nanoparticle surface chemistry to receptor mediated uptake, lipid raft dynamics, intracellular trafficking and immune system activation pathways. These insights are largely disease agnostic, yet the literature that applies them remains fragmented by disease domain. This collection sits within the Molecular Diagnostics and Therapeutics section, which focuses on connecting target identification to clinical application, and brings together mechanistic understanding across disease boundaries to identify the shared molecular logic that will define the next generation of rational nanomedicine. This collection will give researchers a shared molecular language for a challenge they are all working on, often without knowing it.Many excellent nanomedicine collections are organized around a disease, such as neurodegeneration, inflammation, or cancer, or around a material class, such as smart nanocarriers or stimuli-responsive biomaterials. This collection is organized around neither.The central challenge in nanomedicine is not building a sophisticated particle, it is closing the gap between a credible molecular target and a nanosystem that engages it with precision, selectivity and biological plausibility. That challenge is universal: it applies with equal importance to a dysregulated kinase in neurodegeneration, a misfolded enzyme in a lysosomal storage disorder, a pathogen receptor in antimicrobial resistance, and an immune checkpoint in autoimmunity. Yet researchers tackling these problems rarely share a platform. Cardiologists, nephrologists, immunologists and neuroscientists working with nanosystems face identical molecular problems such as receptor targeting, endosomal escape, bioavailability, and immune recognition, but publish in entirely separate communities. This Research Topic creates a shared platform, organized around the molecular target pipeline rather than disease categories, to surface cross disciplinary design principles that would otherwise remain invisible.This Research Topic coincides with the Molecular Diagnostics and Therapeutics section and is organized around a four-stage molecular pipeline: (1) target identification, establishing which receptor, enzyme, signalling node, or biomarker drives pathology; (2) molecular validation, confirming the target’s mechanistic role in disease progression; (3) nanoplatform design, engineering a nanosystem that engages the validated target with defined specificity; and (4) outcome measurement, demonstrating a mechanistically interpretable therapeutic or diagnostic result. We invite contributions addressing this question across the full spectrum of disease, with particular emphasis on conditions underserved by existing nanomedicine collections. Cancer-oriented contributions are also welcome where the focus is novel molecular target identification or mechanism-material connections rather than nanocarrier design. Immune modulation content is also in scope, where explicitly anchored to molecular target engagement: receptor-ligand interactions, antigen presentation pathways, or molecular adjuvant mechanisms. Nanocarrier engineering, materials innovation, or disease treatment that does not articulate this pipeline are outside the scope of this collection. Topic editors: Arindam Chatterjee, Dipranjan Laha, Pankaj Sharma Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83386/from-molecular-targets-to-therapeutic-reality-nanomedicine-across-immunity-metabolic-disease-neurodegeneration-and-beyond