Call For Nominations: 2026 Rising Stars in Biological, Medicinal, and Pharmaceutical Chemistry

In 2024, we recognized 18 outstanding early-career scientists who are breaking ground in their respective areas of research. To shine a light on the next wave of early-career researchers making significant contributions to the field, we invite you to submit a nomination for the 2026 Rising Stars in Biological, Medicinal, and Pharmaceutical Chemistry.

This Special Issue will showcase original, cutting-edge, and impactful research from the next cohort of early-career researchers working in the fields of biological, medicinal, or pharmaceutical chemistry. The scope of this Special Issue is intentionally broad, aiming to highlight researchers conducting work at the forefront of their field.

Those selected as Rising Stars will be invited to submit to ACS Bio & Med Chem Au. These Rising Star publications will appear in issues throughout 2026 and then be collected in a Special Issue at the end of the year, which will be widely promoted. The work will be highlighted as a significant contribution from a researcher who is breaking new ground in their field. As ACS Bio & Med Chem Au is fully open access, your paper will be available to anyone, at any time, anywhere in the world.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Biological Chemistry and Chemical Biology
  • Chemical biology, Enzymology, Metallobiochemistry, Synthetic biology, Disease biology, Cell biology, Agriculture and food, Natural products research, Nucleic acid biology, Neuroscience, Structural biology, and Biophysics
• Medicinal Chemistry
  • Compound design and optimization
  • Biological evaluation
  • Molecular and mechanistic understanding of drug delivery and drug delivery systems
  • Imaging agents
  • Pharmacology and translational science of small and large bioactive molecules
  • Novel computational, cheminformatics, and structural studies for the identification (or structure-activity relationship analysis) of bioactive molecules, ligands, and their targets
  • Computational studies applying established methods will be considered only in combination with novel experimental data (e.g., in cases where new compounds have been designed and tested).
• Infectious Disease Research
  • Pathogens, Host-pathogen interactions, Therapeutics, Diagnostics, Vaccines, Drug-delivery systems, Other biomedical technology development

Organizing Editors

Prof. Squire Booker, Deputy Editor, ACS Bio & Med Chem Au
University of Pennsylvania, United States

Prof. Matthias Gehringer, Associate Editor, ACS Bio & Med Chem Au
University of Tübingen, Germany

Prof. Afsaneh Lavasanifar, Associate Editor, ACS Bio & Med Chem Au
University of Alberta, Canada

How to Nominate

We welcome nominations (including self-nominations) to be featured in this Special Issue until October 20, 2025.

We are seeking early-career investigators who are within the first eight years of their initial independent appointment (Assistant Professor or equivalent) and are conducting research at the forefront of their field. Allowances are made for those who took career breaks for any reason; please reach out if you have any questions regarding eligibility.

Please fill out and submit the nomination form below. If you have any questions regarding suitability, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Submitting to the Special Issue

Researchers who are selected as 2026 Rising Stars will be notified by email.

We welcome submissions for this Special Issue through June 1, 2026. For more information on submission requirements, please visit the Author Guidelines.

Papers accepted for the 2026 Rising Stars Special Issues will be available ASAP (as soon as publishable) online. After all submissions have been published, they will then be compiled online into a Special Issue. Manuscripts submitted for consideration will undergo a full and rigorous peer review process, as expected from ACS journals.

Open Access

ACS Bio & Med Chem Au is a fully open-access journal, which means your work will be immediately and freely available for anyone to read in perpetuity. We recognize that different authors have different levels of access to funding for Article Publication Charges (APCs). Therefore, evaluation of nominations will be entirely based on merit and not on financial resources.

We offer a range of options to support authors with open-access publishing, including through the ACS special country pricing policy, ACS institutional open access agreements, and a limited number of APC waivers, which can be offered at the discretion of the editor at the point of invitation.