Chemical Diversity and Therapeutic Potentials of Marine Invertebrates

Dear Colleagues,

Marine invertebrates represent one of the most diverse and chemically rich groups in marine ecosystems, encompassing major taxonomic phyla such as Porifera, Cnidaria, Mollusca, Arthropoda, Echinodermata. Owing to their unique ecological adaptations, marine invertebrates and their associated microorganisms are prolific sources of structurally diverse and biologically active natural products. Numerous invertebrate-derived secondary metabolites with therapeutic potential, including anticancer, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and neuroactive activities, have been reported, many featuring unprecedented chemical scaffolds and serving as valuable drug leads. Advances in metabolomics, genomics, and bioinformatics have further accelerated their discovery.

This Special Issue aims to highlight recent advances in the chemical diversity and therapeutic potential of marine invertebrates. We invite academic and industrial researchers to submit original research articles, reviews, and communications addressing natural product discovery and structure elucidation, biological and pharmacological evaluation, metabolomics, biosynthesis and genome mining, and symbiotic microorganism-associated natural products.

We believe that this Special Issue will provide a timely platform to advance our understanding of marine invertebrate natural products and to stimulate further research toward the discovery of new marine-derived therapeutic agents.

Dr. Maria Orfanoudaki
Dr. Ji-yeon Hwang
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-anonymized 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.