Advances in Identification of Protein Targets of Natural Products

Dear Colleagues,

Natural products (NPs) possess a unique and vast chemical diversity and their evolution ensures optimal interactions with biological macromolecules. Thus, NPs serve as an essential source for drug discovery. Recently, the identification and validation of cellular targets of bioactive NPs has become a hot research topic in chemical biology, pharmacology, and translational medicine. Although considerable efforts have been dedicated toward developing target identification approaches, the potential cellular targets and pharmaceutical mechanism of most bioactive NPs are still unknown, severely hindering the translation of these NPs into viable drug candidates. Hence, the development of highly reliable approaches remains the rate-limiting step in advancing cellular target identification.

In view of the significance of this scientific issue, this Research Topic invites the submission of high-quality manuscripts in the form of Reviews and Original Research articles as well as Communication and Perspective papers covering novel methodologies for identifying drug targets and potential druggable targets discovery, including:

1. Affinity-based approaches for target identification approaches, such as involving on-bead affinity matrices, biotin-tagged probes, photoaffinity tagging, click chemistry probes, or other innovative approaches.
2. Label-free target identification approaches—CETSA, DARTS or innovative approaches.
3. Target identification using genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, or metabolomics.
4. New approaches toward efficient and high-throughput target screening based on NP databases.
5. Exploration of pharmacological mechanisms via target function studies on bioactive synthesized and natural products.

Dr. Kewu Zeng
Dr. Yang Liu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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