Dear Colleagues,

Recently, bionanomaterials are gaining several significant applications in biomedical applications. Conventionally, these bionanomaterials are synthesized via biological organisms such as bacteria, fungi, algae, viruses, and plants. Further, the polymers or phytochemicals extracted from biological organisms are also transformed into nanomaterials, such as cellulose, chitosan, and so on, and are also considered bionanomaterials. In addition, biomolecule-functionalized nanomaterials and nanoformulated biomolecules are also classified under the bionanomaterials category. The organisms by which they are synthesized will eventually influence the properties of the nanomaterials and are beneficial in yielding smaller sized nanomaterials with enhanced stability and less toxicity. These bionanomaterials are recently receiving focus among researchers to be useful in various biomedical applications, including drug delivery, biosensors, tissue engineering, bioimaging, and disease treatment. However, these bionanomaterials are less stable in biofluids for pharmaceutical applications, which eventually affects their ability to be used in large-scale biomedical applications. Thus, biosynthesis approaches must undergo strict optimization for the fabrication of non/less toxic nanoparticles with high biocompatibility, bioavailability and bioreactivity. These bionanomaterials, especially, are under extensive bionanotechnological research to be beneficial as potential theranostic agents, due to their smaller size, distinct morphology and ability to perform as a controlled drug delivery system. Metal, metal oxides, carbon and polymer-based bionanomaterials are the broad classes of biosynthesized nanoparticles, that can be synthesized either via microbial or plant extracts.

Despite such attractive theranostic properties of bionanomaterials, numerous challenges to use them for biomedical applications still exist. This is due to the complexity of the synthesis procedures to fabricate bionanomaterials by balancing their stability and biocompatibility and having no or very low toxicity. Therefore, there is an overarching requirement for the synthesis of novel bionanomaterials and sophisticated characterization of them for exclusive biomedical and theranostic applications with improved biological properties to reach the clinical use criterion.

This research topic intends to collect recent advances that focus on synthesis, functionalization, and biomedical applications of novel bionanomaterials. We are happy to invite potential manuscripts for evaluation and publication in this Special Issue. We welcome studies focused on emerging bionanomaterials, methodologies, theoretical simulations, and their application in biomedical sciences ranging from therapy, drug delivery, bioimaging, tissue engineering and biosensors. Original Research articles, Reviews, and Mini-Reviews on, but not limited to, the following topics can be included:

• Synthesis and characterization of novel bionanomaterials, such as microbes namely bacteria, fungi, algae, and plants.
• Synthesis of novel bionanomaterials using agricultural wastes as a source for reducing or stabilizing agents.
• Synthesis of novel bionanomaterials, such as nanocellulose, nanochitosan, nanolignin, and other nanosized natural biopolymers.
• Strategies to enhance the properties of bionanomaterials for biomedical applications.
• Advanced physicochemical characterization of bionanomaterials.
• Bionanomaterial-based drug formulations for targeted and controlled delivery.
• Advanced smart and functional bionanomaterials with enhanced drug entrapment efficiency.
• Functionalization of bionanomaterials for biomedical applications.
• New applications of bionanomaterials in the biomedical field.
• Toxicity, reliability, and mechanism of bionanomaterials for biomedical applications.
• Challenges in the large-scale production of bionanomaterials for biomedical applications.

Dr. Jaison Jeevanandam
Dr. Aristeidis Papagiannopoulos
Dr. Theodore Sentoukas
Guest Editors

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• bionanomaterials
• bionanotechnology
• drug delivery systems
• biomedical applications
• biocompatibility
• phytosynthesis
• microbial synthesis
• mycosynthesis