Selective Ligands for Non-canonical DNA Structures: Do They Have a Future in Medicinal Chemistry?
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Pharmacology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2022) | Viewed by 30665
Special Issue Editors
Interests: medicinal chemistry; nucleic acids; drug-nucleic acid interactions; molecular recognition
Interests: molecular recognition; anticancer drugs; drug-nucleic acids interactions; non-canonical nucleic acid structures; G-quadruplex ligands; nucleic acid-directed drug discovery; biological consequences of drug-DNA interactions
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Assessing the biological relevance of interactions involving non-canonical nucleic acid structures and small ligands or large ligands represents a hot topic in present biomedical research, with several interdisciplinary connections with chemistry, medicinal chemistry, and structural and molecular biology. These unusual arrangements, including G-quadruplexes, i-motif, triplexes, hairpins, and cruciforms, appear to play an important role in generating a variety of peculiar local structures that can be assembled, interconverted, and disassembled to modulate biological response. This can be achieved by changes in the cell environment and endogenous components or by addition of low-molecular-weight (LMW) compounds that affect conformational equilibria by binding preferentially to a given form.
This Special Issue will be devoted to examining several LMW species selective for non-canonical nucleic acid arrangements to unveil the basis of binding affinity, and selectivity trying to put together available information to improve molecular recognition. Not only do thermodynamic aspects play a role, but also kinetic issues must be taken in account given the relatively low rates of conformational changes, which foresee situations where components are not at equilibrium. Moreover, experimental conditions closer to physiological (molecular crowding, living cells) are useful to understand how to move in the chemical space for more successful practical applications.
A final topic will deal with the potential pharmacological application of newly developed binders and their perspectives in medicinal chemistry in terms of druggability, and ADMET features.
Prof. Manlio Palumbo
Prof. Claudia Sissi
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. International Journal of Molecular Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. There is an Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal. For details about the APC please see here. 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
-
Non-canonical DNA structures (NCD)
-
Ligands for NCD
-
Tridimensional structures of ligand-NCD adducts
-
Thermodynamics and kinetics of ligand binding to NCD
-
NCD ligands as drugs
-
ADME properties of NCD ligands