Advances in the Synthesis of Natural Bioactive Compounds

Dear Colleagues,

Natural bioactive compounds are natural products with pharmacological activity produced by animals, plants, and microorganisms, for example, podophyllotoxin, paclitaxel, and (-)-β-elemene, etc. The compounds are commonly secondary metabolic products with complex structures and low yields, which makes the study of their large-scale production pivotal for drug development. Chemical or biological synthesis shows prominent advantages in obtaining natural bioactive products. Through retrosynthetic planning to define key intermediates and disconnections, core building block preparation using stereoselective reactions, sequential coupling and functionalization to assemble the carbon skeleton, global deprotection and purification, and other chemical methods to synthesize bioactive compounds, or using cell factories and/or enzymes to synthesize and catalyze the production of these products have broad prospects.

This Special Issue aims to provide a broad survey of the chemical and biological synthesis of natural bioactive compounds. Original research articles or reviews that discuss the rational design, AI simulation, de novo synthesis and modification using chemical methods, or the cellular uptake and usage of complicated substrates, expression and regulation of related genes, biosynthesis from simple substrates or derivation from prodrugs using enzymatic reactions, and improved extraction methodologies of natural bioactive compounds, as well as other related articles, are welcome.

Dr. Honglei Liu
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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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.