Advances in Target-Based Drug Design, Discovery and Screening
A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Medicinal Chemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2027 | Viewed by 483
Editor
Interests: medicinal chemistry; chemical biology; drug design and discovery
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The rapid advancement of molecular biology, structural biology, and chemical sciences has significantly accelerated the evolution of target-based drug discovery. This Special Issue, “Advances in Target-Based Drug Design, Discovery and Screening”, aims to highlight recent developments and emerging strategies that leverage well-defined biological targets to develop effective and selective therapeutic agents.
Target-based approaches have become valuable tools in drug discovery, enabling researchers to rationally design small molecules and novel modalities with improved efficacy and reduced off-target effects. In particular, targeted protein degradation strategies, such as proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs) and molecular glues, have opened new avenues for modulating previously intractable targets. The integration of structure-based design, high-throughput and virtual screening, chemical biology tools, and advanced computational methods has further expanded the scope and success of this paradigm.
This Special Issue seeks to bring together original research articles and reviews that cover a broad range of topics, including screening technologies, target identification and validation, hit-to-lead optimization, development of degraders, and structure–activity relationship (SAR) studies. Contributions addressing challenging targets, such as epigenetic regulators, protein–protein interactions, and previously “undruggable” proteins, are also encouraged. We hope this collection will provide valuable insights and inspire further advances in the field of drug discovery.
Dr. Guang Huang
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. 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
- structure-based drug design
- synthesis
- target-based drug discovery
- virtual screening
- inhibitors
- PROTACs
- degraders
- kinases
- epigenetic targets
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