Toxins as Marine-Based Drug Discovery

Dear Colleagues,

Marine organisms can be seen as an untapped cocktail of biologically-active compounds, being increasingly recognized as new emerging source of therapeutics. Marine organisms have evolved the most sophisticated peptide chemistry and neuropharmacology for their own biological purposes by producing a structural and functional diversity of neurotoxins. These neurotoxins have shown to be highly selective ligands for a wide range of ion channels and receptors. Therefore, they represent interesting lead compounds for the development of, for example, analgesics, anti-cancer drugs, drugs for neurological disorders, such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson disease, Alzheimer disease, etc.

This Special Issue of Marine Drugs aims to provide a comprehensive look at marine toxins and toxin inspired leads and will focus on the mechanism of action and structure-function of marine neurotoxins and their targets, including but not limited to, recent developments relating to the emergence of marine organisms as an underutilized source of highly evolved bioactive peptides and small molecules with clinical potential.

As Guest Editor, I invite colleagues working on marine bioactive peptides and compounds to contribute to this Special Issue of Marine Drugs with interesting papers showing significant advances within this field.

Sincerely,

Dr. Steve Peigneur
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 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.