Biologically Active Small Molecules Inspired by Plant Secondary Metabolites
A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Natural Products Chemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2024 | Viewed by 38336
Special Issue Editors
Interests: medicinal chemistry; drug discovery; chirality
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: biologically active compounds; chirality; antimyotonic agents; antiarrhythmics; antimicrobials; anticancers; α-glucosidase inhibitors; synthesis and extraction of antioxidant agents
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: natural products chemistry; pharmacology; drug discovery; pharmacognosy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
It would seem that more than 500 centuries ago, our closest human relatives―the Neanderthals―used to place Ephedra plant flowers into graves. This might be the most ancient example of paleoethnobotany. As questionable as this statement might be, undoubtedly, the Plant Kingdom has been the most prodigal source of medicines for over 20 centuries.
The last four decades have witnessed a resurgence of interest in plant product research. Numerous and varied are the reasons for this:
- Ever-increasing difficulty in developing new drugs;
- The success of the natural product approach;
- The uniqueness of plant secondary metabolites;
- The impact of new screening methods and analytic techniques.
Unfortunately, plant secondary metabolites are not necessarily the best compounds for pharmaceutical uses, for the following reasons:
- Limitations may exist that prevent the acquisition of sufficient biomass;
- Isolation procedures may be long and expensive;
- The structure of the secondary metabolites may be too complex to allow total synthesis;
- The pharmacological profile may be promiscuous;
- Toxicological aspects may cause concern;
- Oral bioavailability can be too low.
For all of the above reasons, medicinal chemists use to prepare analogues of the starting secondary metabolites in order to unveil sound structure–activity relationships (SAR) and possibly overcome the above limitations.
This Special Issue is designed to scrutinize recent developments in the medicinal chemistry of biologically relevant compounds that were inspired by plant-derived compounds.
Between 1980 and 2013, 20% of the new drugs introduced into the market were either natural products or natural products derivatives, with the latter being highly predominant (18%). The contribution of natural product derivatives to the physician panoply is expected to rise in the next decade. The colleagues that would like to share their valuable work in the field by contributing to this Special Issue of Molecules will give shine to the issue, of course, and would possibly confer higher chances to this prophecy.
Dr. Giovanni Lentini
Dr. Maria Maddalena Cavalluzzi
Prof. Dr. Solomon Habtemariam
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- Drug discovery
- Secondary metabolites
- Natural product scaffolds
- Structure–activity relationships
- Pharmacophore
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