The Role of Natural Products in Drug Discovery: 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: 30 June 2026 | Viewed by 1402
Special Issue Editors
Interests: molecular modeling; cheminformatic; natural products
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: natural products database; cheminformatics; virtual screening; chemotaxonomy; natural product drug discovery; machine learning; molecular descriptors
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Natural products often result from an optimized evolutionary process in which chemicals have been under the selective forces of coevolution, where organisms produce substances in the presence of their predators. These natural compounds have been utilized by humans since ancient times to treat and cure their diseases. Of the existing plants in the world, most of which are unknown from a scientific point of view, only about 5% of the approximately 250,000-500,000 species have been biologically studied and evaluated. Natural products are often phenolic compounds, flavonoids, alkaloids, or terpenes—secondary plant metabolites that may provide several benefits to our health. These benefits include cosmetic action, cardioprotective effects, anti-inflammatory activity, the treatment of cancer, etc.
More than half of the world's population uses medicines of natural origin, and approximately half of the commercially available drugs are of natural origin or based on natural pharmacophores. There is a popular illusion that a natural compound is both effective and completely safe. Pharmaceutical industries find fertile ground in this untruth and exploit the lack of mass knowledge. In addition, the rich chemical universe associated with more advantageous physicochemical properties for the medicinal use of natural products makes them more attractive than purely synthetic ones. Despite the difficulties in the extraction, isolation, and characterization of their molecular structure, and although the sources (mainly the marine ones) are not always abundantly available, the pharmaceutical market generates billions of dollars selling natural drugs. In recent decades, this profit has shown growth. On the other hand, the planet's natural resources have immense wealth that is still unexplored. This issue will consist of articles that report different studies carried out in relation to natural drug research in order to provide relevant information on new drug candidate compounds that use bioactive natural products.
Prof. Dr. Luciana Scotti
Dr. Marcus Tullius Scotti
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- natural product
- medicinal chemistry
- drug design
- drug discovery
- pharmacy
- chemistry
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