Preface for the selected papers from Recent Developments in Pharmaceutical Analysis 2021 (RDPA2021) special issue

This special issue of the Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis contains selected papers from the Recent Development in Pharmaceutical Analysis 2021 (RDPA 2021) international symposium, organized by the Department of Life Sciences of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE) in collaboration with the Division of Medicinal Chemistry of the Italian Chemical Society (SCI) from September 6th to September 8th 2021. RDPA is a very stimulating biennial meeting, which continues a long-standing tradition of excellent scientific meetings for the international and national scientists dealing with pharmaceutical analysis in all its domains and multiple aspects. The most appealing and relevant topics of research in (bio)pharmaceutical analysis, including advanced instrumentation and methodologies for drug discovery, were addressed, giving also peculiar attention to natural products, food and nutraceuticals, forensic science, to name a few. The congress was provided in an on-line edition, due to COVID-19. Despite this, this event gave us the opportunity to share the most advanced research experience and establish new collaboration in the concrete perspective of providing a significant contribution to pharmaceutical analysis in an international context. This edition was fully dedicated to the memory of Emeritus Professor Sergio Pinzauti, an international scientist author and co-author of more than 230 publications in the field of (bio)pharmaceutical analysis. In 1983 Prof. Pinzauti contributed to the launch of the Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis, of which he became Editor in 2002. Creative and proactive, Prof. Pinzauti was founder and organizer of the series of biennial international conferences on Recent Development on Pharmaceutical Analysis (RDPA) and of the annual Summer Course on Pharmaceutical Analysis (SSPA). All his colleagues and the scientific community will always remember him for his high scientific profile, his dedication to research and teaching with enthusiasm and innovation in the ambit of pharmaceutical and biomedical analysis. Coming to the specific content of this special issue, it is addressed at the development of innovative methods, based on hyphenated techniques, for the determination of drugs and their metabolites in different samples, including biological fluids and pharmaceuticals. A special role is also played by new analytical methodologies for the assessment of bioactive natural compounds in plant extracts and food products. The most recent advances of metabolomics based on the untargeted lipidomics are also discussed, including a study on COVID-19 patients with different severity to identify new diagnostic markers of current pandemic. The next symposium in the series (RDPA 2023) is going to be organized from September 3rd to September 6th 2023 by the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Eastern Piedmont (UNIUPO) in Novara (Italy). We hope it will be another successful edition in this well-established conference series.