In Version 14.2, together with Tabular object, we introduced "Schema" element and option in Import of CSV. By default Import interprets 0452E105 as a number:

In[1]:= ImportString["1, -2.34, 0452E105", "CSV"]

Out[1]= {{1, -2.34, 4.52*10^107}}

We can get the TabularSchema object using:

In[2]:= schema = ImportString["1, -2.34, 0452E105", {"CSV", "Schema"}]

Out[2]= TabularSchema[<|"ColumnProperties" -> {<|"ElementType" -> "Integer64"|>, 
<|"ElementType" -> "Real64"|>, <|"ElementType" -> "Real64"|>}, 
  "KeyColumns" -> None, "Backend" -> "WolframKernel"|>]

Notice the type of the third column is "Real64". To change it to "String" we need to create a new TabularSchema and pass it to Import:

In[3]:= schema2 = TabularSchema[<|"ColumnProperties" -> {<|"ElementType" -> 
       "Integer64"|>, <|"ElementType" -> "Real64"|>, <|"ElementType" ->
        "String"|>}|>]

Out[3]= TabularSchema[<|"ColumnProperties" -> {<|"ElementType" -> "Integer64"|>,
 <|"ElementType" -> "Real64"|>, <|"ElementType" -> "String"|>}|>]

In[4]:= ImportString["1, -2.34, 0452E105", "CSV", "Schema" -> schema2]

Out[4]= {{1, -2.34, " 0452E105"}}

To work with large CSV data I strongly suggest to import it as "Tabular" instead of "Data":

In[5]:= ImportString["1, -2.34, 0452E105", {"CSV", "Tabular"}, "Schema" -> schema2] // TabularQ

Out[5]= True

Set the "Numeric" option to False.

Thank you, Gianluca and Carl, for your suggestions. Both work in that they force all elements of the CSV array to be imported as strings. The necessary extra step is to convert all other columns that contain numbers, as intended, back to their type as integers or reals.