About this Research Topic
Renal fibrosis is the common feature and endpoint of various chronic kidney diseases. Fibrosis that begins as persistent and/or severe tissue damage and cellular stress leads to the replacement of normal tissue by scar tissue, and ultimately kidney failure. Oxidative stress, inflammation, fibroblast activation, extracellular matrix deposition and epithelial-mesenchymal transition are the important events during fibrosis. As a hopeful resource of anti-renal fibrosis strategy, natural products suppress these events to alleviate renal fibrosis. There are many signaling pathway involved in these processes, such as TGF-β/Smad, JAK/STAT and Wnt/β-catenin pathways. But due to their constrains, they are not appropriate therapeutic targets to alleviate renal fibrosis. Without proper therapeutic targets and mediators, the drug development from natural products has been limited. Hence, new insights into renal fibrosis and associated therapeutic strategy from natural products should be explored and developed.
This Research Topic aims to investigate the new mechanisms and mediators of renal fibrosis, to explore the field of basic and clinical research, and to discover new therapeutic agents from natural products (compounds, crude extracts, herbs and compound formulas). From omics-based data to basic molecular function research of renal fibrosis, potential new therapeutic targets could be identified to explain the underlying mechanism of renal fibrosis and therapeutic effects of natural products. Therefore, this topic aims to investigate the new mechanisms, identify new therapeutic target, and screen therapeutic drugs from natural products for treating renal fibrosis.
The purpose of this Research Topic seeks to attract innovative original contributions from systems biology to molecular biology research of renal fibrosis and associated therapeutic strategy from natural products. We welcome Original Research and Review articles, among other article types, focusing on the following subtopics, but not limited to:
• Novel or repurposed natural products for treating renal fibrosis.
• Novel molecular mechanisms and therapeutic targets for treating renal fibrosis.
• Methodology of screening strategy for the discovery of novel mechanisms and therapeutic targets for treating renal fibrosis.
• Novel molecular mechanisms of natural products in the prevention and treatment of renal fibrosis.
• Novel therapeutic targets of natural products in the prevention and treatment of renal fibrosis.
• Methodology of isolation/testing/screening strategy for the discovery of novel natural products for treating renal fibrosis.
Keywords: Renal fibrosis, natural products, molecular mechanism, system biology, therapeutic target
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
