Marine Natural Product Studies in Australia

Dear Colleagues,

Marine bioactive compounds have attracted increased attention in recent decades, and several high-throughput screenings have been proposed for the isolation, purification, and characterization of marine bioactives all over the globe. The biodiversity in marine resources offers great possibilities for discovering novel bioactive compounds with potential use, for example, in drug discovery for various therapeutic applications.

Australia has a high diversity and great supply of marine and marine products, like its hundreds of marine species, especially fish, lobsters, abalone, sponges, sea urchins, seaweeds, etc. These marine biota are a brilliant source of bioactive molecules. Marine bioactive compounds exhibit significant biological properties that contribute to their nutraceutical and pharmaceutical potential, and are also considered to be safer alternatives to some existing synthetic drugs. As such, some marine bioactive compounds are currently under investigation at an advanced stage of clinical trials, with a few of them already being marketed as safer drugs.

Marine natural products have been particularly important in the development of novel anticancer, antimicrobial, and analgesic agents. However, the biodiversity and structural complexity of compounds stemming from marine natural products bring along several challenges that need to be overcome in the process. Therefore, in order to better investigate the structure and composition of these molecules, mass spectroscopy and 2D nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy analyses are required. These approaches provide information about the types and relative amounts of atoms, the specific environments of atoms within a molecule, the purity and composition, and detailed structural information about the molecule, including constitutional and conformational isomerization. This information helps to further elucidate the mechanisms involved in various bioactivities, better defining these molecules as potential therapeutics.

This special issue of Marine Drugs aims to collect recent studies on marine bioactives, with special attention to the isolation, purification, and characterization of marine bioactives using different cutting-edge techniques and to highlight some of the solutions developed by scientists to enhance the discovery of bioactive marine compounds. This special issue of Marine Drugs will highlight recent bioactive marine natural product studies conducted by Australian scientists on an array of marine organisms.

Prof. Colin Barrow
Dr. Hafiz Suleria
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 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. Marine Drugs is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 2900 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.

• Marine bioactive compounds
• Marine natural products
• High-throughput screening
• Isolation and characterization
• Drug discovery
• Bioactivities
• Natural product chemistry