The Sixth Liposome Research Days Conference “Liposomes: L'Avant Garde”

Abstract

The Journal of Liposome Research is a misleading name. It implies that our chief concern should be liposomes, which most people understand to be single or multilamellar vesicles. Such a single-minded focus would not only be boring, it would fail to describe the breadth of the field or the preoccupations of most of the practitioners. A more accurate title for what most readers expect from this journal might be Journal of Lipid-Based Delivery Systems, which would also cover, for example, lipid systems for delivering DNA into cells, polymer-lipid delivery vehicles, lipid-based emulsion systems, etc. Although this title might be more accurate, I, for one, would find it disappointing because it implies that our sole concern is how lipids could be used as delivery systems in the pharmaceutical industry. My preferred title–though I doubt that the Editor would stand for it– would be the Journal of Lipid-Based Delivery Systems and All the Other Research Related to Lipids That Any Scientist with a Healthy Curiosity Ought to Find Interesting. A bit awkward perhaps, but at least it conveys a sense, not of where we are, but where many us feel we should be.