Natural Products—the Underestimated Source of New Solutions for the Innovative Antimicrobial Therapies
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Bioactives and Nutraceuticals".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2026 | Viewed by 45
Special Issue Editors
Interests: plant; propolis; Populus; antimicrobial activity; HPLC; mass spectrometry; UV-VIS
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: plants; chromatography; Apiaceae; coumarins; hplc; propolis; seseli
Interests: tissue culture; in vitro; endangered species; flax; plant secondary metabolism; droseracae; dionea
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
From ancient times, plants and other natural products have been an excellent source of medicines for different biological activities. In modern times, natural product preparations, especially different plant extracts and singular component extracts, are still used as medicines. Moreover, biologically active components of natural products are often used as a structural pattern for next-generation medicines. Due to the development of phytochemistry and structural research, there is a possibility to isolate, purify, and accurately describe more and more complex natural product molecules and their extracts. In case of extracts, advanced chromatographic techniques of separations coupled with UV-VIS and mass spectrometry research allow for to identification and quantification of many singular molecules as well as searching for connections between their concentration and biological activity of whole extracts. For these reasons, plant and their preparations can be a wide source of many new drugs.
In the present time, a serious problem for medicine is the rising resistance of pathogenic microorganisms to antibiotics. There are several known types of bacteria and fungi which are resistant or almost resistant to known antibiotics. Therefore, their main environment is often hospitals, where they are life-saving factors for many patients, especially those with weaker function of the immunologic system. Therefore, the development of new antimicrobial agents is particularly important. Plants are potentially rich sources for many new drugs against pathogenic microorganisms. For this reason, we warmly encourage the submission of manuscripts which are focused on the antimicrobial activity of plant extracts and their singular molecules.
Due to the reliability of research, the submitted manuscript should meet some requirements, which are described below:
-Chemical composition of natural product extracts and or their fractions should be qualified and quantified (or at least half quantitative analysis should be performed).
-Qualification can be performed by comparison with a standard or by using at least two independent methods (for example, two independent mass spectrometry methods or mass spectrometry coupled with another spectral research, such as UV-VIS analysis).
-The method of quantification should be suitable for the analysed group of components.
-Authors should prove the connection between the composition of natural product extracts and their antimicrobial activity by statistical analysis or another way.
-Antimicrobial test should be performed at least by the broth dilution method or agar diffusion method. However, we encourage performing more advanced research, such impact of natural products on the formation and eradication of bacterial biofilms, as well as the investigation of the impact of natural components on bacterial metabolism and cell structure.
-In case of singular components, we encourage performing at least two independent NMR research and mass spectrometry to prove their structure.
In summary, we encourage submission of manuscripts which are focused on analysing the chemical composition of natural product extracts and their connection with antibacterial activity against drug-resistant and non-resistant microorganisms.
Dr. Piotr Okińczyc
Dr. Jarosław Widelski
Dr. Jakub Szperlik
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- plant
- medicines
- natural product
- antimicrobial activity
- drug resistance
- chemical analysis
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