About the Journal

Despite modern therapies, cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorder, cancer, chronic kidney disease, neurodegeneration and infections are still placing huge threats to human health. With aging populations, complex comorbidities, COVID-19 pandemic, the health burden of these diseases will continue to be a clinical and societal challenge. Drug discovery and development are imperatively needed more than ever before, so it is more important to ensure that drug discovery and pharmacology research continues to be a global priority and that high quality, novel and impactful discoveries are published and disseminated to audiences as wider as possible.  In the world of pharmacological publishing, this will be achieved through International Journal of Drug Discovery and Pharmacology (IJDDP), the authentic open access journal with a clear mandate to publish results of high-quality research embracing multidisciplinary, informative appraisals of exciting new areas, clinical trial updating, and easily digestible format of guidelines.

Historically, drugs were discovered by identifying the active ingredient from traditional remedies through a serendipitous manner. Modern drug discovery involves screening synthetic small molecules and natural products, medicinal chemistry and optimization processes to increase affinity, selectivity, efficacy/potency, metabolic stability, and oral bioavailability. Beyond classical drugs, we are embracing the advent of RNAi therapy and CRISPR-employed cell therapy which are categorized as biomaterial drugs. Along with advancements in drug discovery, drug delivery technologies are also undergoing evolution. Adeno-associated virus-mediated gene delivery, exosome-based system, magnetic nanoparcticles and biomolecular condensate display great potential in selective delivery, enhancing drug potency and lowering off-target effects, which are particularly important for drug development. With the availability of multiple omics databases and single cell sequencing databases, we witness new landscapes emerging in the drug discovery/pharmacology field such as system pharmacology and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery. These new ammunitions will empower data analysis, target identification and compound design with full context, between genes, functions, diseases, targets, toxicological processes and more, to produce novel discoveries. By highlighting these domains, we aim to bring freshness in promptly disseminating a broad coverage of innovative information to facilitate mechanistic pharmacology to drug discovery and then drug development to the clinical trial pipeline. In so doing, we take advantage of open access (transparency, enhancing citation, faster impact and wider collaboration, etc), user-friendly approaches (eg generic formatting of initial submission, bespoken diagram drawing and waiver of article processing charge for commissioned submissions) and social media visibility to serve authors, reviewers and readers.

I feel truly delighted to be the founding Editor-in-Chief of IJDDP. It is exciting to plan the vision of the journal and an enormous honour to be in a position where one is entrusted by authors, reviewers, and editors to make decisions on original contributions that influence drug discovery research. I am committed to taking IJDDP to the level of excellence with my highly motivated editorial team, with each member having enriched intellectual capacity through special areas of expertise. Our current editorial team is diverse representing 8 countries (China, United Kingdom, United States, Germany, France, South Africa, Malaysia, and Singapore), and its international coverage will continue expanding. I am especially indebted to IJDDP's superb management team under the operating leadership of Roy Zhang for their dedication and tireless efforts in launching IJDDP. With enthusiasm, energy and huge ambition, I am confident that we will deliver on our promise of providing the preferred journal in the field. Please join me in this exciting journey by submitting your very best science to the journal.