Low cost and large available biogenic silica from diatoms and diatomaceous earths represents an innovative material for successful development of next generation healthcare devices, overcoming the limitation of synthetic inorganic and polymeric materials production. This is demonstrated by Luca De Stefano and co-workers in article 1601125. The cover picture shows some examples of bioengineered nature-derived silica nanodevices with biomedical functionalities for biosensing and subcellular drug delivery applications.