Chiral Psychoactive Substances: Identification, Toxicity, and Enantioselective Studies

Dear Colleagues,

The abuse of new psychoactive substances and the use of pharmaceuticals to reach psychoactive effects have dramatically increased in recent years. New psychoactive substances represent a public health threat since they are easily accessible online and are sold as a legal alternative to illicit drugs. To circumvent the law, new derivatives are clandestinely synthesized and, consequently, new psychoactive substances keep emerging on the drug market with unknown properties. Most of the psychoactive substances (legal or illicit) are chiral, meaning that they can exist as enantiomeric pairs with different biological and toxicological activities. Thus, enantioselective studies are required, including analysis, metabolism, (eco) toxicological and biodegradation.

The main aims of the present Special Issue include both fundamental studies and applications in a multidisciplinary research field that enrolls chiral psychoactive substances. Contributions to this issue, both in the form of original research or review articles, have the broad scope to illustrate recent and future trends in the identification of new chiral psychoactive substances, methodologies to obtain and analyze the enantiomers in diverse matrices such as biological or environmental, and enantioselective studies in metabolism, biodegradation and (eco)toxicity. Studies that consider enantiomeric profile as a tool for consumption estimation by wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) are also welcome.

Key aspects such as enantioselective synthesis, enantiomeric resolution, chiral analyses by chromatographic methods, chiral recognition studies—both in enantioseparation and in biological systems—and enantioselectivity in toxicodynamic, toxicokinetic, ecotoxicity studies and enantiomeric profile in WBE will be considered in this Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Carla Sofia Garcia Fernandes
Prof. Dr. Cláudia Maria Rosa Ribeiro
Prof. Dr. Maria Elizabeth Tiritan
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 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.