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Current State-of-the-Art Methodologies for Drug Discovery from Nature
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Current State-of-the-Art Methodologies for Drug Discovery from Nature

A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Natural Products Chemistry".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 July 2021) | Viewed by 7237

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Kenneth Thermann Kongstad

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Natural Product Research Group, Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 2, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
Interests: natural products; extremophiles; filamentous fungi; endophytes; antibiotics; anticancer; NMR; mass spectrometry; dereplication
Prof. Dr. Dan Stærk

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 2, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
Interests: natural products; medicinal plants, NMR spectroscopy; mass spectrometry; hyphenated NMR techniques; high-resolution inhibition profiling; metabolomics; ligand fishing; Type 2 diabetes

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Nature is the most important source of new bioactive compounds, and the field of natural product research is continuously developing. With an extensive and diverse chemical landscape, Nature holds great promise for future drug discovery. However, natural drug discovery has often been described as finding the needle in a haystack. The challenges encountered have led to the development of various methodologies for discovering bioactive molecules with new modes of action. In fact, with an ever-increasing need for new drugs, the development of new and efficient strategies and methods for drug discovery from Nature is pivotal for our success.

This Special Issue 'Current State-of-the-Art Methodologies for Drug Discovery from Nature' aims to serve as a platform for the natural products research society to share recent advancements in the field. These include, but are not limited to, technical advancements, screening strategies and platforms, biotechnological methodologies, and promising natural product sources.

In this context, we welcome high-quality contributions, from basic or applied scientists, describing new methodologies in natural product drug discovery, as well as review papers concerning specific areas within this field.

Dr. Kenneth Thermann Kongstad
Prof. Dr. Dan Stærk
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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.

Keywords

  • Natural Product drug discovery
  • Natural product screening strategies
  • Natural products
  • Biotechnology in natural product chemistry
  • Promising sources of bioactive natural products

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 13342 KiB  
Article
Coupling Microplate-Based Antibacterial Assay with Liquid Chromatography for High-Resolution Growth Inhibition Profiling of Crude Extracts: Validation and Proof-of-Concept Study with Staphylococcus aureus
by Hamidreza Ardalani, Syariful Anam, Kresten J. K. Kromphardt, Dan Staerk and Kenneth T. Kongstad
Molecules 2021, 26(6), 1550; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules26061550 - 11 Mar 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3526
Abstract
With the identification of novel antibiotics from nature being pivotal in the fight against human pathogenic bacteria, there is an urgent need for effective methodologies for expedited screening of crude extracts. Here we report the development and validation of a simple and dye-free [...] Read more.
With the identification of novel antibiotics from nature being pivotal in the fight against human pathogenic bacteria, there is an urgent need for effective methodologies for expedited screening of crude extracts. Here we report the development and validation of a simple and dye-free antimicrobial assay in 96-well microplate format, for both determination of IC50 values and high-resolution inhibition profiling to allow pin-pointing of bioactive constituents directly from crude extracts. While commonly used antimicrobial assays visualize cell viability using dyes, the developed and validated assay conveniently uses OD600 measurements directly on the fermentation broth. The assay was validated with an investigation of the inhibitory activity of DMSO against Staphylococcus aureus, temperature robustness, interference by coloured crude extracts as well as inter-day reproducibility. The potential for high-resolution S. aureus growth inhibition profiling was evaluated on a crude extract of an inactive Alternaria sp., spiked with ciprofloxacin. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current State-of-the-Art Methodologies for Drug Discovery from Nature)
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27 pages, 5734 KiB  
Article
Secure and Sustainable Sourcing of Plant Tissues for the Exhaustive Exploration of Their Chemodiversity
by Rhodin C. Joseph, Matheus Silva da Fonseca Diniz, Viviane Magno do Nascimento, Abraão de Jesus Barbosa Muribeca, Johan Carlos Costa Santiago, Luziane da Cunha Borges, Paulo Roberto da Costa Sá, Paulo Wender Portal Gomes, Júlio César da Silva Cardoso, Marcela Natalia Rocha de Castro, Thais Fiusa, Hervé Rogez, Sylvain Darnet, Mara Silvia Pinheiro Arruda, Milton Nascimento da Silva, Alberto Cardoso Arruda, Jean A. Boutin, Consuelo Yumiko Yoshioka e Silva and Emmanuelle Lautié
Molecules 2020, 25(24), 5992; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules25245992 - 18 Dec 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3008
Abstract
The main challenge of plant chemical diversity exploration is how to develop tools to study exhaustively plant tissues. Their sustainable sourcing is a limitation as bioguided strategies and dereplication need quite large amounts of plant material. We examine if alternative solutions could overcome [...] Read more.
The main challenge of plant chemical diversity exploration is how to develop tools to study exhaustively plant tissues. Their sustainable sourcing is a limitation as bioguided strategies and dereplication need quite large amounts of plant material. We examine if alternative solutions could overcome these difficulties by obtaining a secure, sustainable, and scalable source of tissues able to biosynthesize an array of metabolites. As this approach would be as independent of the botanical origin as possible, we chose eight plant species from different families. We applied a four steps culture establishment procedure, monitoring targeted compounds through mass spectrometry-based analytical methods. We also characterized the capacities of leaf explants in culture to produce diverse secondary metabolites. In vitro cultures were successfully established for six species with leaf explants still producing a diversity of compounds after the culture establishment procedure. Furthermore, explants from leaves of axenic plantlets were also analyzed. The detection of marker compounds was confirmed after six days in culture for all tested species. Our results show that the first stage of this approach aiming at easing exploration of plant chemodiversity was completed, and leaf tissues could offer an interesting alternative providing a constant source of natural compounds. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current State-of-the-Art Methodologies for Drug Discovery from Nature)
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