Current and Recent Advances in Natural Products-Based Drug Discovery, Design and Development

Dear Colleagues,

Natural products have served as a plentiful source of drugs since the old days. The successful story of natural products in the discovery and development of medicines is still being written and forecasted to continue in the future. Not necessarily that the final approved drug is a natural product, but in many cases, it could also be a semi-synthetic compound, a modified derivative, an analog of a natural product, or even a purely synthetic compound that mimics a natural product or inspired by a natural product. In principle, natural products-based drug discovery design and development comprise several steps that involve, but are not limited to:

• Extraction, isolation, characterization, and biological evaluation of natural products or metabolites.
• Design, synthesis, and evaluation of synthetic or semi-synthetic derivative or analogs.
• Development of purely synthetic molecules that mimic natural products.

In addition, natural products-based drug discovery design and development encompass in vitro and/or in silico study of molecular mechanisms and/or target identification, development of synthetic routes to access interesting bioactive natural products, and several other related areas to drug discovery and development.

In this Special Issue, we intend to spotlight the current and significant advances, starting from basic research to clinical development in the hot topic of Natural Products-Based Drug Discovery, Design and Development. Both research and review manuscripts might be considered in this special issue.

Prof. Dr. Ahmed H. E. Hassan
Dr. Rhitajit Sarkar
Prof. Dr. Marta H. Henriques
Guest Editors

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