Marine Natural Products as Potential Drug Leads

Dear Colleagues,

Marine natural products are an excellent source of new molecules with unique chemical and biological properties, representing a worthy font of new potential drug leads. In the last few years, many marine-inspired drugs have been commercialized or are under investigation for the treatment of several diseases, and more companies are making investments in this area. Furthermore, as new disorders are emerging, as are major diseases, such as infectious or cancerous ones, pharmaceutical companies are looking for small molecules with new mechanisms of action with which to develop effective and safe drugs. Thus, it appears crucial to develop innovative approaches to discover new potential drug leads. The study of marine natural products represents an efficient strategy for finding new molecules capable of interacting specifically with biological targets, giving us the opportunity to discover and study new mechanisms of action as well as intracellular pathways.

The focus of this Special Issue will be to highlight the potential of marine natural products in the field of drug discovery. This Special Issue will cover all drug discovery research starting from marine natural products, including their isolation, structure characterization, biosynthesis, biological properties and mechanism of action as well as synthetic approaches towards them and related analogues. Submissions on the development of innovative scientific approaches to discover new lead compounds are welcome.

Academic and industry scientists are invited to submit original research articles and/or reviews highlighting the pharmacological potential of marine compounds.

Dr. Genoveffa Nuzzo
Guest Editor

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. Marine Drugs is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). 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.

• marine natural products
• drug discovery
• structure characterization
• medicinal chemistry
• bioactive metabolites