Microbial Exploitation of Marine Anti-infective Drugs

Dear Colleagues,

Marine natural products have been found to offer an amazing chemical diversity associated with interesting biological activities, especially with respect to anti-infectives. Over the years, there has been an ever-increasing number of newly discovered antibiotic, antiviral, and anti-protist compounds. These properties relate to the ecological functions of the compounds, and many studies indicate a microbial origin of compounds formerly isolated from marine macrobes. Microbial sources are of special interest, as they are suitable for biotechnological production. A challenge for development is the often-observed silence of biosynthetic gene clusters in laboratory conditions.

In sum, the biodiscovery of new natural products with anti-infective properties is rarely transferred into pharmaceutical pipelines and drug development. The multiple reasons for this gap include the supply issue, scaling and transfer difficulties, and economic calculations, as anti-infectives offer less revenue compared to other therapeutic indications.

Strategies to overcome this gap will be the focus of a Special Issue titled “Anti-Infective Agents from the Sea”. We are looking for articles dealing with the following topics:

• Methodical progress to accelerate the biodiscovery of new anti-infectives
• Approaches to increase the cultivated diversity of anti-infective-producing marine microbes
• Sustainable production of marine anti-infectives, especially from macro-organisms
• Biotechnological realisation of compound production for larger scales
• Ecological roles and biosynthetic regulation of natural products with anti-infective properties
• Marine anti-infectives against less-studied infectious diseases

I look forward to your communications, reviews, and full research articles.

Prof. Dr. Antje Labes
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.

• cultivated diversity
• marine biotechnology
• marine antibiotics: biosynthesis, regulation, structural diversity, SAR
• marine antivirals: biosynthesis, regulation, structural diversity, SAR
• sustainable supply of marine anti-infectives
• anti-infective natural products