Expanding Natural Product Collections: From Diverse Biological and Food Sources to Innovative Structures
A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Natural Products Chemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 April 2026
Special Issue Editors
Interests: natural products chemistry; creation of natural product collections; drug discovery from plant-derived compounds
Interests: natural products chemistry; drug discovery; isolation and purification of secondary metabolites; structural optimization of bioactive natural compounds and their analogues
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Natural products continue to serve as a critical reservoir of bioactive molecules, supporting innovation in drug discovery, nutraceutical development, and chemical biology. Their remarkable chemical diversity, biological relevance, and structural complexity make them invaluable tools for exploring biologically relevant chemical space and developing new therapeutic agents.
However, traditional workflows in natural product research, which have often focused on a narrow range of sources and linear isolation protocols, are no longer sufficient to unlock the full potential of this resource. Recent advances in high-resolution metabolomics, synthetic derivatization, and bioinformatics now facilitate the creation of enriched and diversified natural product collections.
We are pleased to invite you to contribute to the Special Issue "Expanding Natural Product Collections: From Diverse Biological and Food Sources to Innovative Structures", to be published in Molecules (Section: Natural Products Chemistry / Pharmacognosy / Medicinal Chemistry).
This Special Issue will focus on the design, development, and application of natural product extracts and pure compound collections derived from plants, microbes, fungi, marine organisms, and underexplored sources, including agro-food materials, endemic species, medicinal and officinal plants, and ecological niches. Particular attention will be given to integrated approaches that combine advanced isolation techniques, high-resolution metabolomic profiling, scaffold diversification, and the construction of well-curated collections—both physical and digital—that support translational research and high-throughput screening.
The topic aligns with the scope of Molecules, especially its sections Natural Products Chemistry, Pharmacognosy, and Medicinal Chemistry, by promoting the development of compound collections and analytical frameworks that enable high-throughput screening, bioactivity profiling, and translational research. The Special Issue also aims to support the journal’s mission to integrate natural product science with applications in drug discovery, food science, and biotechnology.
In this Special Issue, we welcome original research articles and comprehensive reviews. Research areas may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Development and curation of extract or fraction collections from plants, microbes, fungi, marine organisms, and food-derived materials.
- Structure-guided isolation and dereplication using high-resolution mass spectrometry and NMR-based metabolomics.
- Bioprospecting in underexplored ecosystems and biosynthetic gene cluster mining for cryptic natural products.
- Chemical or biosynthetic derivatization of natural scaffolds to generate novel analogues and enhance library diversity.
- Cheminformatics and database construction for open-access or targeted natural product collections.
- Application of metabolomics and phytochemical profiling to food, herbal products, and officinal plants.
- Innovative methodologies for the purification, enrichment, and characterization of structurally complex matrices.
- Case studies demonstrating how curated natural product collections have supported lead identification, mechanism-of-action studies, or biological screening.
We look forward to receiving your contributions and to fostering a collaborative, interdisciplinary discussion on the dynamic role of natural product collections in modern research.
Dr. Francesca Ghirga
Dr. Silvia Cammarone
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 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. Molecules is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2700 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
- natural product collections
- targeted and untargeted metabolomics
- synthetic and semi-synthetic derivatives
- bioassay-guided isolation
- structure elucidation
- cheminformatics in natural product research
- genome mining
- natural product-inspired drug and nutraceutical discovery
- food and medicinal plant chemistry
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