Natural-Product-Based Drug Discovery and Development
A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Chemical and Molecular Sciences".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2025 | Viewed by 387
Special Issue Editors
Interests: bioactive natural products; phytochemistry; inflammation; flavonoids; functional foods
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: drug discovery; natural products; cancer
Interests: chronic respiratory diseases; pharmacology; phytoceuticals; drug delivery
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Medicinal plants play a vital role not only in traditional medicine but also modern drug discovery and development. Plant-derived natural products and their semisynthetic derivatives have gained increasing attention in recent years as potential therapeutic agents for managing lifestyle-related diseases, as well as for their anti-cancer and anti-infective properties. One of their significant advantages over synthetic molecules lies in their vast natural abundance and structural diversity. Various strategies, such as random screening, traditional usage-based screening, chemotaxonomy, in silico studies, reverse pharmacological approaches, high-throughput screening, etc., are commonly employed for lead discovery in natural products. However, transforming natural products from plants into therapeutic agents for patients presents numerous challenges, including the proper identification of the biological source, ensuring a sustainable supply, cultivation, quality control, and the synthesis of structurally complex molecules on a large scale. Thus, this Special Issue aims to cover both basic and clinical research related to natural-product-based drug discovery and development.
We are pleased to invite you to submit original research articles and reviews related to the aim of this Special Issue, “Natural-Product-Based Drug Discovery and Development”. Research areas of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Traditional medicines, medicinal plants, and ethnopharmacology;
- Bioprospecting of medicinal plants;
- Extraction, isolation, and identification of natural products;
- Basic research related to the pharmacological activity analysis;
- Semi-synthesis of natural product derivatives and their activities;
- Drug delivery strategies related to natural products;
- Preclinical and clinical research related to natural products;
- In vitro and in vivo screening of natural product extracts;
- Modern drug discovery technologies;
- Biotechnological approaches related to natural products;
- Innovations and future trends related to natural products
Dr. Hari Prasad Devkota
Dr. Ajit Prakash
Dr. Keshav Raj Paudel
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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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. Applied Sciences 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 2400 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 products
- phytochemicals
- drug discovery
- drug delivery
- pharmacology
- semi-synthesis
- bioactivity
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