Particle Engineering Takes Center Stage as Journal Seeks Translational Drug Formulation Research

A major pharmaceutical science journal has opened its doors to one of the most consequential conversations in modern drug development. The Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation, published by Springer, has announced a special issue titled Translational Advances in Pharmaceutical Dosage Form Development Based on Particle Engineering and Formulation Science, scheduled for publication in January 2027. The submission deadline has been set for June 30, 2026, giving research teams across academia and industry a defined window to contribute work that bridges the long-standing gap between laboratory innovation and medicines that actually reach patients. The issue will be steered by three guest editors from South Korea: Sung-Joo Hwang of Yonsei University, Min-Soo Kim of Pusan National University, and Heejun Park of Duksung Women’s University, each of whom brings a research background rooted in pharmaceutics and drug delivery science.

The announcement matters because dosage form development sits at a peculiar crossroads in the pharmaceutical enterprise. A molecule can be extraordinarily potent against its biological target and still fail clinically if it cannot be dissolved, absorbed, stabilized, and manufactured at scale. Industry analysts have long estimated that a large fraction of newly discovered drug candidates, particularly the poorly water-soluble small molecules that dominate modern discovery pipelines, exhibit solubility profiles that complicate or outright block oral absorption. Particle engineering and formulation science are the disciplines charged with rescuing those molecules, and the special issue explicitly frames its scope around that translational mission rather than around purely theoretical advances.

The first thematic pillar listed by the editors is particle engineering approaches for solubility, stability, and bioavailability enhancement. In practice this encompasses a family of techniques that manipulate the physical state of a drug substance at the micrometer and nanometer scale. Micronization reduces particle size to increase the specific surface area available for dissolution, a principle governed by the Noyes-Whitney equation, which states that dissolution rate scales with surface area and the concentration gradient at the particle interface. Nanonization pushes the same logic further, producing drug nanocrystals whose dramatically elevated surface-area-to-volume ratios and increased saturation solubility, arising from the Ostwald-Freundlich relationship between particle curvature and solubility, can transform a virtually unabsorbable compound into a viable oral product. Amorphous solid dispersions take a different route, locking the drug into a high-energy glassy state within a polymeric carrier to prevent the energetically favorable but therapeutically problematic return to the crystalline lattice.

Stability is the counterweight to every solubility gain. A metastable amorphous form dissolves faster but carries a thermodynamic incentive to recrystallize during storage, potentially collapsing the very bioavailability advantage it was designed to deliver. Polymorphism, the ability of a molecule to pack into multiple crystal forms, remains one of the most closely watched variables in pharmaceutical development because different polymorphs can differ in dissolution behavior, mechanical properties, and physical stability. The special issue’s emphasis on solid-state characterization and control reflects this reality. Techniques such as powder X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry, dynamic vapor sorption, and solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy allow formulators to fingerprint the solid state of a drug and monitor whether it survives processing, packaging, and shelf life intact.

The second pillar, advanced formulation strategies for pharmaceutical dosage forms and drug delivery systems, extends the scope well beyond the oral tablet. Injectable formulations demand sterility, isotonicity, and control of protein aggregation for biologics. Inhalable products require careful aerodynamic particle size distribution, typically targeting particles in the one-to-five-micrometer range so they deposit in the deep lung rather than being exhaled or trapped in the throat. Transdermal systems must balance drug flux across the stratum corneum with skin tolerability. Each route imposes its own physical and physiological constraints, and the guest editors have deliberately invited contributions across all of them, signaling that the translational challenges of delivery are shared across modalities even when the technical solutions differ.

Translational formulation science and scale-up form the third thematic focus, and arguably the one with the highest economic stakes. A formulation that performs beautifully in a one-liter laboratory vessel can behave entirely differently in a two-hundred-liter commercial mixer, where shear rates, heat transfer, and mixing timescales shift in ways that are not linearly scalable. Wet granulation, hot-melt extrusion, spray drying, and high-shear blending all exhibit scale-dependent behavior that can alter particle size distribution, content uniformity, and solid-state form. The discipline of translation demands that scientists anticipate these shifts early, using small-scale models that predict large-scale performance, so that a product validated in clinical trials is the same product that eventually rolls off the manufacturing line. Failures at this interface have historically delayed or derailed drug launches, making scale-up science a quiet but decisive factor in whether patients ever see a new therapy.

Emerging manufacturing technologies constitute the fourth pillar of the call for papers. Continuous manufacturing has moved from concept to commercial reality in recent years, replacing batch processing with integrated production lines in which powder feeding, blending, granulation, drying, and tableting proceed without interruption. The approach offers tighter process control, smaller facility footprints, and faster response to demand changes. Additive manufacturing, including three-dimensional printing of dosage forms, has demonstrated the ability to produce tablets with complex internal geometries and personalized doses, an approach validated by the regulatory approval of the first printed pharmaceutical product in the United States in 2015. Other emerging tools, such as electrospinning for nanofibrous drug carriers and supercritical fluid technologies for particle formation, offer routes to structures and morphologies that conventional unit operations cannot easily achieve.

The final thematic area, Quality by Design and Process Analytical Technology, represents the regulatory and methodological backbone that holds the rest together. Quality by Design, or QbD, inverts the traditional approach to pharmaceutical quality: instead of testing finished products to catch defects, developers design formulations and processes around a defined quality target product profile, identify the critical material attributes and critical process parameters that govern that profile, and establish a design space within which the product reliably meets specifications. Process Analytical Technology, or PAT, supplies the real-time eyes for this framework, using inline and at-line sensors such as near-infrared and Raman spectroscopy to track composition, moisture, and solid-state form during manufacture rather than waiting for laboratory results hours or days later. Together these frameworks allow continuous verification of quality and support real-time release testing, a shift regulators in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere have actively encouraged.

The choice of the Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation as the venue is consistent with the issue’s translational framing. The journal, based in South Korea and indexed in major biomedical databases, has increasingly positioned itself at the intersection of pharmaceutics, drug delivery, and pharmaceutical engineering, and its readership spans both academic researchers and industry scientists who must carry formulations from bench to batch record. A special issue curated by editors from three Korean universities also reflects the growing prominence of Asian pharmaceutical science in global dosage form research, a region where generic and innovative formulation development alike has expanded rapidly over the past two decades.

For researchers considering submission, the June 30, 2026 deadline implies a publication rhythm that allows for peer review and revision ahead of the January 2027 issue date. The topical list published with the announcement is deliberately broad within its theme, encompassing everything from fundamental particle engineering studies to applied manufacturing case reports, provided the work speaks to translation. What the editors appear to be seeking, in effect, is a snapshot of a field in transition: a moment when nanoscale materials design, continuous processing, real-time analytics, and regulatory science are converging to make dosage form development faster, more predictive, and more reliable. For a discipline that determines whether breakthrough molecules become breakthrough medicines, that convergence is not merely academic. It is the difference between a promising compound in a vial and a therapy a patient can swallow, inhale, inject, or wear, and the special issue aims to document exactly how that difference gets engineered.

Subject of Research: Translational pharmaceutical dosage form development based on particle engineering and formulation science

Article Title: Special Issue: Translational Advances in Pharmaceutical Dosage Form Development Based on Particle Engineering and Formulation Science

Article References: Special Issue: Translational Advances in Pharmaceutical Dosage Form Development Based on Particle Engineering and Formulation Science. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: particle engineering, formulation science, drug delivery, bioavailability, solid-state characterization, scale-up, continuous manufacturing, Quality by Design, Process Analytical Technology, pharmaceutical dosage forms, solubility enhancement, Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation