Perspectives for the Development of New Multitarget Marine Drugs

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, there has been growing interest in marine natural products (MNPs) since they are endowed with unusual scaffolds and have a high potential to facilitate the discovery of new leads with particular mechanisms of action. MNPs are ideal chemical probes for determining the biochemical pathways underlying a given disease and discovering novel drug targets. The main limitation of MNPs is that they are usually isolated in low amounts that are sufficient for elucidation of their structure but inadequate for extensive drug screening. In this context, organic synthesis proves to be a powerful tool to enhance the potential of MNPs: the synthesis of MNPs or of their analogues is one of the feasible strategies for enriching screening libraries with an adequate number of MNPs and MNP-inspired molecules.

The incidence of chronic multifactorial diseases has been increasing dramatically in the last few years, placing a high economic burden on public health systems. The combination of various drugs is usually the best option for the treatment of multifactorial diseases, but can lead to undesired drug–drug interactions and reduced patient adherence. The lack of efficiency of traditional drug therapies has stimulated pharmacological research in the search for a multi-target-directed ligand approach; in this approach, MNPs are able to simultaneously modulate several relevant therapeutic targets of a certain disease.

For the Special Issue, “Perspectives for the Development of New Multitarget Marine Drugs”, we invite academic and industry scientists from a large number of fields to submit original and conceptual research articles. Reviews that present up-to-date knowledge on multitarget MNPs and MNP-derived synthetic compounds useful for a specific therapeutic area (e.g., antidiabetic, antitumor, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, etc.) are also welcome.

Prof. Dr. Concetta Imperatore
Dr. Marcello Casertano
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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.