Happy Birthday Kataoka‐sensei!

With this issue of Macromolecular Bioscience, colleagues and friends wish to congratulate Prof. Kazunori Kataoka on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Prof. Kataoka has definitely been an inspiration for us, as well as an incalculable number of students and researchers around the world for several decades, and his pioneering contributions have helped shape the nanomedicine field. To grasp Prof. Kataoka's research interests and style in science, it is worth recalling some significant points of his career. Prof. Kataoka received a PhD in Polymer Chemistry in 1979 under the supervision of Prof. Teiji Tsuruta, a distinguished polymer chemist, with his thesis “Synthesis of functional polymers having amino groups and evaluation of their biomedical properties”, which anticipated his pioneering works on the development of block copolymer assemblies and non-viral gene vectors. His academic career started in 1979 at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Tokyo Women's Medical College. In 1989, Prof. Kataoka moved to the Tokyo University of Science, where he became full professor in 1994. In 1998, he accepted a professorship at The University of Tokyo, where he is currently appointed. During his research career, Prof. Kataoka made major contributions in polymer chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, biomaterials, drug and gene delivery, and nanomedicine, which have impacted the field with more than 500 peer-reviewed articles and over 100 patents. The citations to these works exceed 54,000 and his current h-index is 123, which places him among the most cited scientists in the world. His accomplishments in the development of polymeric micelles for delivering anticancer agents prompted the founding of Nanocarrier Co. Ltd. in 1996 (http://www.nanocarrier.co.jp/en/index.html), which is leading the translation of several drug-loaded micelles in human studies, including 2 formulations under phase III clinical trials, cisplatin-loaded micelles (NC-6004) and paclitaxel-loaded micelles (NK-105). Moreover, his research has recently spurred the spinoffs Braizon Therapeutics Inc. for the development of brain-targeted drug delivery systems, and AccuRNA Inc. (http://www.accurna.com/en/index.html) for developing nucleic acid-based drugs by using advanced delivery technologies. Prof. Kataoka's achievements have been widely recognized through numerous awards, including the Japan Society for Biomaterials, the Jorge Heller Controlled Release Society (CRS) Outstanding Paper Award, the Society of Polymer Science, Japan, the Clemson Award in Basic Research from the Society for Biomaterials, the Barré Award from the University of Montreal, the Founder's Award from the CRS, the National Institute of Materials Science Award, Japan, the Humboldt Research Award, the Leo Esaki Prize, and the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society of Polymer Science, Japan. Moreover, Prof. Kataoka has promoted the field of research by actively participating in many scientific societies, as well as serving as president of several, including the Japanese Society for Biomaterials, the Japanese Society of Gene Design and Delivery, the Society of Polymer Science, Japan, and the CRS. Prof. Kataoka now also serves as Director of Research of the Innovation Center of Nanomedicine, a ¥3.5 billion project launched in 2014 at the KING SKYFRONT Hub in Kawasaki City. The center's missions are to relieve medical care burden, provide opportunity for collaboration between university and industry, and foster innovation by boosting the implementation of cutting-edge technologies. There, Prof. Kataoka and his team are currently focusing on nanomedicine strategies for treating cancer stem cells, managing neurological disorders, and achieving safe and efficient vaccination, as well as minimally invasive nano-therapies in combination with medical devices and novel diagnostic appliances. In this “birthday issue”, we are very happy to highlight the broad range of topics assembled, with 11 papers doing a great job in representing Prof. Kataoka impact on the field. Here, Tim Deming has presented the construction of pH-sensitive nanoassemblies based on boronic acid-bearing block copolymers for the delivery of proteins; Rainier Haag has described the development of a series of dendritic polyglycerols having pH-sensitive cleavable amine moieties directed to achieve effective gene delivery; Hideyoshi Harashima has reviewed current nanomedicine strategies for controlling the biodistribution, tumor accumulation and subcellular targeting of drugs; Wim Hennink has recapped the recent approaches for improving the targeting ability of nanomedicines against solid tumors; Jindrich Kopecek has presented an elegant strategy for following enzymatic activation of drug release from HPMA copolymer by tracing the changes in the fluorescence resonance energy transfer signal; Glen Kwon has explored the potential of Triolimus, i.e. the polymeric micelles incorporating paclitaxel, 17-AAG and rapamycin, as radiosensitizers for enhancing antitumor efficacy in combination with radiation therapy; Jean-Christophe Leroux and Davide Brambilla have reviewed the preparation methods of layer-by-layer polymeric assemblies incorporating solid nanoparticles for achieving nanostructures with high drug loading and tunable drug release; Nobuhiro Nishiyama together with Horacio Cabral have reviewed the role and potential of supramolecular structures for concurrent therapy and diagnosis, so called theranostics; Nicholas Peppas has contributed with an article on the development of hydrogels based on terpolymers of methacrylic acid, N-vinyl pyrrolidone and poly(ethylene glycol) for efficient oral delivery of proteins; Maria Jesus Vicent has reviewed her recent achievements in the development of polypeptide-based drug conjugates; and Ernst Wagner has reviewed the structure-activity relationship of polyamide carrier systems for the efficient delivery of small interfering RNA. We would like to thank all of the authors for their outstanding contributions. We strongly believe that these works will certainly provide great inspiration to many. Also, we express our sincere gratitude to the staff of Macromolecular Bioscience and Wiley for their kind assistance. Besides the above short memoir and the scientific recount, we would also like to note Prof. Kataoka's dedication to excellence, the high respect from his colleagues and the deep appreciation of his students. It is with gratitude for his wisdom and knowledge, his passion for teaching and his ability to inspire others to achieve their full potential, that we dedicate this issue to him. Together with all other authors that have contributed to this issue, we would like to express our heartiest congratulations to Prof. Kataoka on his 65th birthday, wishing him happiness and continued success. Happy birthday Kataoka-sensei!

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