Chemical Composition and Bioactivities of Essential Oils

Dear Colleagues,

Identifying, testing and implementing the use of new medicinal plants in current therapeutic protocols is a very complex, time-consuming and costly process. In many situations, the focus is on the study of plant extracts as it is known that in some cases the activity of the phytocomplex is higher than that of pure phytochemicals due to the synergism of the molecular structures. Plant secondary metabolites, including essential oils (EOs), may in fact be one of the best sources for identifying promising new therapies. Essential oils are volatile, natural complex compounds characterized by a strong odor and in nature they play an important role in protecting plants from biotic and abiotic stresses. The biological properties of EOs are widely documented by the extensive literature demonstrating their antitumor, antibioceptive, antiviral, antiphlogistic and antimicrobial activity in vitro.  Furthermore, essential oils contain different chemical classes of compounds whose heterogeneity of active parts can help prevent the development of drug resistance. Therefore, due to their low toxicity, good pharmacokinetics and multitarget action, EOs represent important alternatives to synthetic chemicals as promising drugs for use in therapy.

The purpose of this Special Issue, entitled "Chemical Composition and Bioactivity of Essential Oils", is to provide an update on the phytochemical composition of plant extracts and analyze the bioactivity of essential oils and their constituents in different models of study, in vitro and in vivo.

Major topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:

• Extraction, isolation and characterization of bioactive compounds from plant extracts;
• Evaluation of the antioxidant, antitumor and antimicrobial activity of essential oils and their constituents;
• Evaluation of the activity of essential oils in multi-drug resistance models.

Dr. Manuela Labbozzetta
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-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.