About this Research Topic
New drug development is an interdisciplinary endeavour that relies on the cooperation between pharmacology, pharmaceutical chemistry, pharmaceutical analysis, and pharmacy. Generally, the identification of disease-related targets is the first step in drug discovery and development, requiring the knowledge from epidemiology, genomics, structural biology and system biology. This step could give the researcher a better understanding of the disease to be treated, and help the researcher to build a hypothesis that how to influence the structure of the disease-related target and to obtain the desired function. Following that, the researcher should perform lead compound discovery and optimization to confirm the hypothesis and find the potential candidate. In this process, various kinds of laboratory tests and experiments, including experiments in silico, in vitro, in vivo were involved.
Natural products are the primary source of clinically used drugs. However, their characteristics of multi-targets may cause problems in the target identification and validation which should be enhanced. Besides, how to improve the bioavailability of natural products is another question that should be considered. In the process of converting the bio-active hit into a drug candidate, researchers work on lead compounds discovery, target identification and validation, bioavailability improvement should make extensive cooperations. Therefore, interdisciplinary collaboration and communication are becoming more and more important and significant.
This Research Topic covers a wide range of areas such as natural products discovery, total synthesis, target identification and validation, and bioavailability improvement. However, studies carried out with crude extracts/multiherbal preparations without chemically characterized compounds and/or in silico studies without actual biological experiments are not suitable for this Topic. This collection welcomes articles covering, but not limited to the themes.
• Bioactive natural products discovery/ total synthesis/ target identification and validation
• Active compounds bioavailability improvement approaches, such as prodrug design, drug delivery system
• Interdisciplinary cooperation cases
Natural products are the primary source of clinically used drugs. However, their characteristics of multi-targets may cause problems in the target identification and validation which should be enhanced. Besides, how to improve the bioavailability of natural products is another question that should be considered. In the process of converting the bio-active hit into a drug candidate, researchers work on lead compounds discovery, target identification and validation, bioavailability improvement should make extensive cooperations. Therefore, interdisciplinary collaboration and communication are becoming more and more important and significant.
This Research Topic covers a wide range of areas such as natural products discovery, total synthesis, target identification and validation, and bioavailability improvement. However, studies carried out with crude extracts/multiherbal preparations without chemically characterized compounds and/or in silico studies without actual biological experiments are not suitable for this Topic. This collection welcomes articles covering, but not limited to the themes.
• Bioactive natural products discovery/ total synthesis/ target identification and validation
• Active compounds bioavailability improvement approaches, such as prodrug design, drug delivery system
• Interdisciplinary cooperation cases
Keywords: Interdisciplinary, Natural products, Lead compound discovery, Total synthesis, Target identification and validation
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