Marine Natural Products as Anticancer Agents—6th Edition
A Special Issue of Marine Drugs (ISSN 1660-3397) belonging to the section "Marine Pharmacology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 January 2027 | Viewed by 2071
Editors
Interests: marine natural products; biotechnological applications; pharmaceutical applications; signal transduction; anticancer activities; compounds isolation; anti-inflammatory activity; neuroprotective activity
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: oncology; signal transduction; cell death; inflammation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This Special Issue will spotlight marine organisms as a largely untapped source of chemically and biologically unique scaffolds for anticancer drug discovery. Marine natural products exhibit remarkable structural diversity, including complex macrocycles, halogenated metabolites and polycyclic architectures, expanding the chemical space beyond terrestrial compounds. This molecular diversity offers exclusive opportunities to discover first-in-class mechanisms and therapeutically relevant targets in oncology.
We invite submissions that provide in-depth mechanistic insights and translational relevance, illustrating how marine-derived compounds influence oncogenic signaling pathways, mitochondrial metabolism, epigenetic regulation, proteostasis, redox balance, immunogenic cell death pathways and interactions with the tumor microenvironment. Particular focus will be on studies demonstrating target engagement, structure-activity relationships, mechanisms to bypass cancer drug resistance and synergy with existing treatments, such as kinase inhibitors, immune checkpoint blockade and BH3 mimetics.
Marine compounds often function through mechanisms distinct from traditional cytotoxic or targeted therapies, offering innovative approaches to overcome both inherent and acquired drug resistance in solid tumors and blood cancers. Manuscripts that include pharmacological characterization, in vivo validation, biomarker discovery and rational combination approaches are especially encouraged.
Additionally, recent advances in marine biotechnology, including synthetic biology, heterologous expression systems, aquaculture and scalable fermentation processes, have made sustainable sourcing and large-scale production more feasible. Contributions discussing these enabling technologies, as well as medicinal chemistry optimization of marine lead compounds, are welcome.
Overall, this Special Issue seeks to connect marine chemical ecology with precision oncology and translational pharmacology to accelerate the development of next-generation anticancer drugs derived from the ocean’s unique chemical diversity.
Dr. Celso Alves
Prof. Dr. Marc Diederich
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.
Keywords
- marine-derived anticancer agents
- anticancer natural products
- marine chemical scaffolds
- oncogenic signaling pathways
- mitochondrial targeting
- metabolic reprogramming
- immunogenic cell death
- non-apoptotic cell death
- epigenetic modulation
- proteostasis disruption
- tumor microenvironment
- drug resistance mechanisms
- synthetic lethality
- combination therapy
- precision oncology
- structure-activity relationship
- medicinal chemistry optimization
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Related Special Issues
- Marine Natural Products as Anticancer Agents in Marine Drugs (10 articles)
- Marine Natural Products as Anticancer Agents 2.0 in Marine Drugs (12 articles)
- Marine Natural Products as Anticancer Agents 3.0 in Marine Drugs (12 articles)
- Marine Natural Products as Anticancer Agents, 4th Edition in Marine Drugs (10 articles)
- Marine Natural Products as Anticancer Agents, 5th Edition in Marine Drugs (6 articles)
