About this Research Topic

Background

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) include diabetes, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, chronic kidney and cardiovascular diseases obesity, neurodegenerative diseases, metabolic syndrome, dyslipidemia, rheumatoid arthritis, etc. They are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in developed and developing countries. NCDs are accelerated by the negative impact of globalization and impose enormous human, social, and economic costs. Historically, strategies to prevent and treat communicable diseases have been prioritized in many countries. This prioritization has reduced the burden of communicable diseases worldwide but has resulted in noncommunicable diseases being largely neglected. The WHO estimates that NCDs account for 80% of the global disease burden and approximately 71% of all deaths are due to NCDs.

In contrast to infectious diseases, which can be controlled by vaccines, there are no effective treatments for non-communicable diseases due to their relatively complicated mechanism of action. Additionally, some of the currently available medications have side effects. Given the devastating human burden of NCDs, novel natural resources for the treatment of NCDs are urgently needed.
Natural products from plants, animals, marine organisms, and microorganisms can achieve recognizable improvement for NCDs prevention and treatment. They are reservoirs of structurally diverse bioactive materials with numerous biological effects on human body, including the management of NCDs. According to their structures, these molecules can exhibit diverse biological activities for NCDs remedies.
Computational chemistry and bioinformatics are now well-established scientific fields to study drug-disease relationships by understanding the connection of the disease to the target, and the consequent mechanism of interaction between the target and the drug. In silico strategies for NCDs treatment lead design represents an integrative approach to the in vitro and in vivo ones. The main objective of this project is to determine bioactive molecules and their possible biological role for NCD prevention and remedy and hence outline their potential as candidates for drug discovery.

This Research Topic aims for up-to-date and original information on the medicinal effects of natural products on noncommunicable diseases, emphasizing the understanding of the functions and mechanisms of these molecules to related bioactivities. We welcome Original Research, Review, Mini Review and Perspective articles on themes including, but not limited to:
• Identification of biologically active molecules from natural resources associated with noncommunicable diseases like diabetes, liver, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer, etc.
• Structure-activity relationships of bioactive molecules and mechanism of action on noncommunicable diseases.
• Metabolic profiling, fingerprinting, and metabolomics analyses.
• In Silico molecular docking and molecular dynamic simulation analysis of phytochemicals.

Keywords: Noncommunicable Diseases; Bioactive Molecules; Metabolomics; In Silico Study.

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.

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