Small-Molecule Inhibitors as Anticancer Drugs
A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Medicinal Chemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 July 2026 | Viewed by 28
Special Issue Editor
Interests: nanobiosensors; optical biosensors for cancer biomarkers; graphene oxide and functionalized gold nanoparticle nanocarriers for gene and drug delivery; mitochondria and exosome biosensors; surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS); fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)
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Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Contemporary research on small molecule inhibitors (SMIs) has gained significant attention due to their advantages in a wide range of targets as well as in efficacy, selectivity, safety, and potential in cancer therapy and other disease treatments. SMIs are often involved in several key cellular processes including growth, survival, proliferation, metabolism, and DNA repair. Their action is based on precise targeting of cell cycle regulatory mechanisms to disrupt the signaling pathways that cause cancer cell survival, proliferation, and spread. Small-molecule inhibitors can also cross the blood–brain barrier (BBB), potentially changing the activity of target proteins within the brain as well as modulate the tumor microenvironment, making it more susceptible to immune cell attack and enhancing the immunotherapy efficacy. Therefore, there is an urgent need to gain more knowledge regarding small-molecule inhibitors.
This Special Issue of Molecules is devoted to small-molecule inhibitors (SMIs) and will offer a comprehensive selection of recent research studies, short communications, and review articles focusing on current state-of-the-art insights, challenges, and perspectives regarding small-molecule inhibitors. This is crucial for advancing cancer therapy and paving the way for new innovative approaches for cancer treatment and new therapeutic target identification. To enhance our understanding of SMI interactions with target molecules, this Special Issue will also include studies exploring molecular dynamics simulations.
I warmly invite researchers involved in the broad areas of cancer research to contribute original research papers or review articles to this Special Issue, presenting the current progress in this field. Both experimental and theoretical works will be considered for publication in this Special Issue.
Dr. Magdalena Stobiecka
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- small-molecule apoptosis-protein-family inhibitors
- small-molecule mitotic inhibitors
- small-molecule kinase inhibitors
- small-molecule receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors
- small-molecule non-receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors
- small-molecule serine/threonine kinase inhibitors
- small-molecule epigenetic inhibitors
- small-molecule proteasome inhibitors
- small-molecule inhibitors for disrupting protein–protein interactions
- small-molecule inhibitors aimed at exploiting tumor metabolic vulnerabilities
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