Dr. Yuri Lvov, professor of chemistry and T.C. Pipes endowed chair in micro and nanosystems at Louisiana Tech University, recently received the honor of co-editing a special issue of the prestigious Advanced Drug Delivery Review. Lvov co-edited and wrote the issues’ preface as a result of his pioneering work in the field of drug delivery systems and his innovative use of polymeric nanocapsules and clay nanotubes in drug disbursement.  Advanced Drug Delivery Review is recognized as one of the world’s top scientific journals with an impact factor of 13.6. An impact factor shows the value and merit of a journal, and is expressed by the number of citations for every paper published in a journal within the last year.  The average impact factor for the best 200 scientific journals is 2.7 with the top ten scientific journals in the world having impact factors between 28 and 12. “It was an honor to be editor of this special edition, writing the preface, and co-authoring two of the issue’s reviews,” said Lvov.  “There are more than 8,000 scientific journals in the world, and all of them have impact factors calculated by the US Institute of Scientific Information.  Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews’ impact factor places it among the very top journals in the world. Lvov was one of the first scientists to recognize the potential of layer-by-layer nanoassembly of naturally occurring polymers such as gelatin, cellulose, or polysaccharides for pharmacology.  Natural polymers and clays are safe, biocompatible and inexpensive, and may be used for novel drug formulation.  They also allow scientists to modify the properties to the resulting composites, in beneficial ways. Lvov says that this recognition from Advanced Drug Delivery Review was not only great for him and his contributions to this field of research, but also for Louisiana Tech.  “This shows Louisiana Tech as a first class research university by aligning the name of the university and that of its Institute for Micromanufacturing with the best institutions for drug nanoformulation research.” The special issue of Advanced Drug Delivery Review focused on the use of layer-by-layer self-assembled “nanoshells” through a simple method that allows for the design of capsules with nanometer precision, which would provide targeted and timed drug delivery.  According to Lvov’s preface, in the early 1990’s, studies were devoted to the layer-by-layer assembly using synthetic polymers.  Today, researchers have begun exploring natural “green” methods for creating layer-by-layer encapsulations. Lvov believes that all manuscripts issued by the university should be written in consideration of impact factors calculated by the US Institute for Scientific Information because this allows an independent evaluation of a publication’s merit. “Only through a tough peer-review process can we guarantee that material is new, important and reliable,” Lvov said.  “With 90 to 95 percent of all submitted manuscripts rejected, it ensures that only the best and most important results are published.”