Pharmacological Activities and Mechanisms of Action of Natural Products
A special issue of Current Issues in Molecular Biology (ISSN 1467-3045). This special issue belongs to the section "Bioorganic Chemistry and Medicinal Chemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2025 | Viewed by 9
Special Issue Editors
Interests: precision medicine; peptide drug discovery and design; mass spectrometry; proteomics-based target-identification; functional and structural characterization; high-throughput drug screening and validation; peptide and protein chemistry; molecular pharmacology; targeted protein modifiers; targeted drug delivery; natural products
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: peptide; drug discovery; molecular pharmacology; natural products; chemical biology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
2. Department of Pharmacological Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau, Macao, China
Interests: cardiovascular; neurodegenerative diseases and brain disorders; molecular pharmacology; mitochondrial functions; systems biology; genome; transcriptome; proteome; protein interaction network; natural product chemistry; Chinese medicine; peptide chemistry
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Natural products are small molecules biosynthesized by living organisms that have evolved to modulate biochemical pathways and biological processes. This Special Issue focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms by which natural products exert their pharmacological activities and therapeutic effects. For centuries, natural products have been invaluable sources of medicinal agents, exemplified by antibiotics, antimalarials, analgesics, and anticancer drugs like penicillin, artemisinin, ziconotide, and paclitaxel, respectively. Unraveling their molecular targets, modes of binding, and regulatory roles can unlock new therapeutic strategies.
This SI welcomes original research elucidating the structural basis of natural products’ bioactivity through techniques like X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, computational modeling, and pharmacological assays. Also of interest are investigations into natural products’ interactions with proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, and other biomolecules, underlying their pharmacological effects, and mechanistic studies dissecting their impact on cellular signaling pathways, gene expression, enzyme activities, and other molecular processes. Additionally, this Issue aims to showcase cutting-edge strategies for natural product isolation, derivatization, and molecular target deconvolution to accelerate drug discovery. Through an enhanced understanding of natural products’ mechanisms of action, this Special Issue strives to enrich the pipeline for molecular probes and therapeutic leads.
Dr. Shining Loo
Dr. Antony Kam
Prof. Dr. Lee Simon Ming-Yuen
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- natural products
- pharmacological activity
- molecular mechanisms
- therapeutic targets
- structure–activity relationships
- protein–ligand interactions
- cell signaling pathways
- enzyme inhibition/activation
- molecular targets
