Advances in Drug Discovery and Synthesis: 2nd Edition
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Pharmacology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 July 2025 | Viewed by 1973
Special Issue Editors
Interests: amyloid proteins; medicinal chemistry; degenerative diseases; drug design; X-ray crystallography; chemical synthesis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: medicinal chemistry; drug discovery; metalloenzyme inhibitors; neurodegenerative diseases; anticancer drugs; CNS agents; chemical synthesis; structure–activity relationship; natural products
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Drugs of both natural and synthetic origin interact with specific targets in the body to prevent or cure diseases/disorders.
Drug discovery starts with identifying an unsatisfied therapeutic need, including assessing the adequacy of the available therapies and researching a cure for new emerging diseases. Drug discovery and development is a highly expensive process that can be performed using different approaches: serendipity, screening a great number of molecules via high-throughput screening (HTS), the selective optimization of the activity of drugs or natural products, the repurposing of known drugs, rational drug design, and the synthesis of new molecular entities using the information derived from X-ray crystal structures and in silico modeling techniques. The use of these strategies may lead to the discovery of a result that will require an optimization process to improve its properties (such as increasing the affinity and selectivity for the target, non-toxicity, bioavailability, etc.) to obtain a lead compound that will become a drug.
In this Special Issue, “Advances in Drug Discovery and Synthesis: 2nd Edition”, we focus on all aspects involved in the discovery of new drug candidates, e.g., the design and synthesis of biologically active molecules, new synthetic routes leading to the discovery and optimization of lead compounds, molecular modeling, bioinformatics, structure-based drug design, and crystal structure analysis. Research articles, comprehensive reviews, and short communications are welcome, with the aim of collecting the most recent insights and results involving multidisciplinary approaches in the research on biologically active new molecules.
Dr. Lidia Ciccone
Dr. Susanna Nencetti
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Molecular Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. There is an Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal. For details about the APC please see here. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- medicinal chemistry
- drug discovery
- design and synthesis of bioactive compounds
- molecular modeling
- X-ray crystallography
- structure–activity relationships
- structure-based drug design
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