Current Advances in Medicinal Phytochemistry—A Themed Issue in Honour of Professor Simon Gibbons

Dear Colleagues,

We welcome the submission of original research papers and review articles for the Special Issue of Molecules that will honor Prof. Simon Gibbons for his contribution in the field of Medicinal Phytochemistry.

He and his group have carried out excellent research in the chemistry and antibacterial activity of natural products from plants and his expertise is in the isolation, structure elucidation and biological evaluation of these compounds. He is also interested in compounds that modify bacterial resistance. A further focus of his research is into the characterization of natural and synthetic New Psychoactive Substances that can be crude plant or fungal materials or single natural or synthetic chemical entities.

Simon Gibbons is Head of the UEA School of Pharmacy and Professor of Natural Product Chemistry. He received BSc and PhD degrees in Chemistry and Phytochemistry respectively and worked in the Biotechnology sector in Natural Product Chemistry from 1993-1997. In October 1997 he was appointed as Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the Faculty of Pharmacy at Kuwait University and in 1999 moved to the University of London to become Lecturer in Pharmacognosy. In 2007 he was appointed as Professor of Phytochemistry. Currently, he is a co-opted member of the UK Government Home Office’s Cannabis-Based Medicinal Products Work Group and was a Council Member of the UK Home Office Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) and Chairman of the Novel Psychoactive Substances Committee (NPSC). From 2010-2012 he was a member of the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory products Agency (MHRA) Herbal Medicines Advisory Committee (HMAC). In 2009 he was elected as a Fellow of the Prince of Wales Foundation for Integrated Health. He is also a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London and the Royal Society of Chemistry and in 2009 was invited to be an Associate Researcher of the University Kebangsaan Malaysia.

He was President and Vice-President of the Phytochemical Society of Europe from 2010-2016 and has been honoured for his work as recipient of the Pharmanex Prize for Phytochemistry (2012), the first Tshwane University of Technology Vice Chancellor’s Seminar Award (2009) and the 2005 Phytochemical Society of Europe - Pierre Fabre Award for Phytochemistry.

Simon Gibbons is founding Editor-in-Chief of Phytochemistry Letters and Co-editor of Progress in the Chemistry of Organic Natural Products (“Zechmeister”) and a member of the Editorial Boards of Journal of Natural Products, Phytochemical Analysis, Phytochemistry Reviews, Fitoterapia, Phytotherapy Research, Chinese Journal of Natural Medicines (CJNM), Scientia Pharmaceutica, Natural Products and Bioprospecting and Phytopharmacotherapy.

In the Special Issue, we aim to collect original research articles and review articles in the following topics:

• Plant-derived antibacterials
• Natural product bacterial resistance modifying agents
• The chemistry and pharmacology of novel psychoactive substances and drugs of abuse
• Phytochemistry of Herbal drugs
• Bioactivity-guided isolation and structure characterization of compounds from medicinal plants
• Bioactive potential of metabolites derived from plant endophytes
• Synthetic transformations of biologically interesting compounds

Dr. Agnieszka Ludwiczuk
Prof. Dr. Yoshinori Asakawa
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. Molecules is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 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.