RSC Pharmaceutics Blog

We are delighted to introduce you to our new RSC Pharmaceutics Editorial Board member, Professor Jessica Larsen.

Professor Larsen is the Carol and John ’63 Cromer Family Endowed Associate Professor, currently holding position at Clemson University.

She began her academic career at the University of Virginia, obtaining her BS in Chemical Engineering in 2012. She obtained her PhD in Chemical Engineering from Auburn University, where she was able to perform research under Drs. Mark Byrne in Chemical Engineering and Doug Martin in the College of Veterinary Medicine. Her research focuses on polymer-based nanotechnology to enable the treatment of neurologic conditions, delivering drugs across the blood-brain and blood-nerve barriers. In her undergraduate mentoring efforts, she has received the Phil and Mary Bradley Award for Mentoring in Creative Inquiry in 2020. She was also selected as the 2021 Outstanding Faculty Woman at Clemson University. She received the NSF CAREER Award in the Spring of 2021, the Governor’s Young Scientist Award for Excellence in Scientific Research in 2022, and the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Science Junior Researcher of the Year in 2024. She has been an invited speaker at the Controlled Release Society Annual Meeting, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Meeting, and the World Biomaterials Congress. Her work has been continually funded by the NSF, NIH, and multiple disease-specific foundations since her lab’s inception in 2017.

Read some of Professor Larsen’s research:

Complex Coacervates as a Promising Vehicle for mRNA Delivery: A Comprehensive Review of Recent Advances and Challenges
Chloe Forenzo, Jessica Larsen
Mol. Pharmaceutics 2023, 20, 9, 4387–4403

Combining Nanoparticle Shape Modulation and Polymersome Technology in Drug Delivery
Cara Katterman, Christopher Pierce, Jessica Larsen
ACS Appl. Bio Mater. 2021, 4, 4, 2853–2862

The characterization of self-assembled nanostructures in whole blood
Mark Pitman and Jessica Larsen
Anal. Methods, 2020, 12, 2068-2081

RSC Pharmaceutics is a new gold open access journal from the Royal Society of Chemistry and publishes research focused on formulating a drug into a medicine, with the intention of achieving controllable drug delivery with high efficacy. This journal is open for submissions.

Check out our author guidelines for information on our article types or find out more about the advantages of publishing in a Royal Society of Chemistry journal.

Keep up to date with our latest news by following us on LinkedIn or BlueSky. You can also keep informed by signing up to our E-Alerts.

We are delighted to introduce you to our new RSC Pharmaceutics Editorial Board member, Dr Francesca Taraballi.

Dr Taraballi is currently Associate Professor, Director at the Center for Musculoskeletal Regeneration, Houston Methodist Research Institute, USA.

Dr. Francesca Taraballi is a leading expert in translational nanomedicine and immunoengineering, with a strong focus on the clinical scalability of drug delivery systems. Her research bridges material science and immunology to develop smart biomaterials for regenerative medicine and oncology. A core aspect of her work centers on the design, optimization, and GMP-compliant scale-up of nanoparticle platforms—particularly lipid-based systems—for RNA and small molecule delivery. She has extensive experience in navigating regulatory pathways and implementing manufacturing workflows for first-in-human trials, contributing to the development of hospital-based models for personalized therapeutics.

Read some of Dr Taraballi’s research:

RNA therapies for musculoskeletal conditions
Chiara Mancino, Madeline Franke, Antonietta Greco, Tarun Sontam, Patrick Mcculloch, Claudia Corbo, Francesca Taraballi
Journal of Controlled Release, 2025, 377, 756–766

Harnessing RNA Technology to Advance Therapeutic Vaccine Antigens against Chagas Disease
Chiara Mancino, Jeroen Pollet, Assaf Zinger, Kathryn M. Jones, Maria José Villar, Ana Carolina Leao, Rakesh Adhikari, Leroy Versteeg, Rakhi Tyagi Kundu, Ulrich Strych, Federica Giordano, Peter J. Hotez, Maria Elena Bottazzi, Francesca Taraballi, Cristina Poveda
ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, 2024, 16(13), 15832–15846

Biomimetic Scaffolds Modulate the Posttraumatic Inflammatory Response in Articular Cartilage Contributing to Enhanced Neoformation of Cartilaginous Tissue In Vivo
Guillermo Bauza-Mayol, Marcos Quintela, Ava Brozovich, Michael Hopson, Shazad Shaikh, Fernando Cabrera, Aaron Shi, Federica Banche Niclot, Francesca Paradiso, Emman Combellack, Tom Jovic, Paul Rees, Ennio Tasciotti, Lewis W. Francis, Patrick Mcculloch, Francesca Taraballi
Advanced Healthcare Systems, 2022, 11(1), 2101127

RSC Pharmaceutics is a new gold open access journal from the Royal Society of Chemistry and publishes research focused on formulating a drug into a medicine, with the intention of achieving controllable drug delivery with high efficacy. This journal is open for submissions.

Check out our author guidelines for information on our article types or find out more about the advantages of publishing in a Royal Society of Chemistry journal.

Keep up to date with our latest news by following us on LinkedIn or BlueSky. You can also keep informed by signing up to our E-Alerts.

We are delighted to introduce you to our new RSC Pharmaceutics Advisory Board member, Dr. Marianne Ashford.

Dr. Marianne Ashford is a Senior Principal Scientist in Pharmaceutical Sciences, R&D at AstraZeneca.

Read some of Dr. Ashford’s research:

A translational framework to DELIVER nanomedicines to the clinic
Paul Joyce, Christine J. Allen, María José Alonso, Marianne Ashford, Michelle S. Bradbury, Matthieu Germain, Maria Kavallaris, Robert Langer, Twan Lammers, Maria Teresa Peracchia, Amirali Popat, Clive A. Prestidge, Cristianne J. F. Rijcken, Bruno Sarmento, Ruth B. Schmid, Avi Schroeder, Santhni Subramaniam, Chelsea R. Thorn, Kathryn A. Whitehead, Chun-Xia Zhao and Hélder A. Santos
Nat. Nanotechnol., 2024, 19, 1597

Free drug and ROS-responsive nanoparticle delivery of synergistic doxorubicin and olaparib combinations to triple negative breast cancer models
Robert J Cavanagh, Patrícia F Monteiro, Cara Moloney, Alessandra Travanut, Fatemeh Mehradnia, Vincenzo Taresco, Ruman Rahman, Stewart G Martin, Anna M Grabowska, Marianne B Ashford and Cameron Alexander
Biomater. Sci., 2024, 12, 1822

In depth characterization of physicochemical critical quality attributes of a clinical drug-dendrimer conjugate
Silvia Sonzini, Fanny Caputo, Dora Mehn, Luigi Calzolai, Sven Even Borgos, Astrid Hyldbakk, Kevin Treacher, Weimin Li, Mark Jackman, Najet Mahmoudi, M Jayne Lawrence, Claire Patterson, David Owen, Marianne Ashford and Nadim Akhtar
Int. J. Pharm., 2023, 637, 122905

RSC Pharmaceutics is a new gold open access journal from the Royal Society of Chemistry and publishes research focused on formulating a drug into a medicine, with the intention of achieving controllable drug delivery with high efficacy. This journal is now open for submissions.

Check out our author guidelines for information on our article types or find out more about the advantages of publishing in a Royal Society of Chemistry journal.

Keep up to date with our latest news by following us on LinkedIn. You can also keep informed by signing up to our E-Alerts.