October 2008
Published by the American Chemical Society
Volume 9, Number 10
Copyright 2008 by the American Chemical Society
Special Chinese Section Highlighting Papers of Chinese Authorship A Note from the Editor I would like to begin this issue by thanking all of our authors, reviewers, and readers for your support of Biomacromolecules. Thanks to your contributions, we have an interesting and wellcited journal. I am pleased to mention that the impact factor for Biomacromolecules is now 4.169 and the number of submitted manuscripts keeps increasing. Many of the submitted manuscripts are from China, and to highlight Chinese research of today, we have, in this issue, collected a few papers into a Special Chinese Section. I have asked Professor Xuesi Chen, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, China, to introduce this section.
Ann-Christine Albertsson Editor-in-Chief BM800922S
Introduction to Special Chinese Section Highlighting Papers of Chinese Authorship Nowadays, biopolymers and biomaterials are widely used in various medical fields. More and more attention has been paid to the applications of biomaterials, especially biodegradable materials in medical fields such as sutures, bone fixation, drug delivery, biotechnology, tissue engineering, and so on. Although the history of research of biopolymers and biomaterials in China is not very long, fast and remarkable development has been achieved in the past decade. That is mainly attributed to two reasons. First, there has been support from a variety of funds from government and corporations; second, more and more excellent chemists have taken part in this promising field of study, and some of them returned from abroad. With the advance in research of the biopolymers and biomaterials in China, the number of papers published in this field by Chinese chemists is increasing year by year. Most of the studies focused on tissue engineering, gene therapy, biodegradable polyester, drug delivery, and synthesis and characterization of novel biodegradable and biocompatible polymeric materials. At present, some findings of these studies have been commercialized for either clinical or environmental applications. I believe that more and more biorelated products developed from the ideas and experimental results of the basic research by Chinese chemists will be commercially available soon. Although great progress has been achieved in the biomaterial field in comparison with the past in China, the influence of studies made by Chinese chemists to the world is still limited. One reason for this situation is because the development in the biorelated materials field in China has not been known well by the other scientists in the world. Therefore, to let the world know more about the development in this field in China, we have held many conferences and 10.1021/bm800922s CCC: $40.75 2008 American Chemical Society Published on Web 09/26/2008
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symposiums in the past 10 years, which have also strengthened the cooperation between China and other countries in this field. I believe that high quality publication is another way to introduce our work to the rest of the world. For this purpose, it was very exciting and encouraging to receive the news from Professor Ann-Christine Albertsson, Editor-in-Chief of Biomacromolecules, about the Special Chinese Section. This is a good opportunity for us to display part of our studies on biopolymers and biomaterials in China. The present section includes a number of articles contributed by some researchers in China. I am positive that Chinese researchers will play a more important role in this field and have more contributions to the development of Biomacromolecules.
Xuesi Chen Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, China BM800979P
