Trends in Antifungal Drug-Discovery Using Traditional Medicine

For many years, traditional medicine has been seen as a plausible way of obtaining mixtures of compounds that could have applications in curing or mitigating illnesses. This practice involves promoting bioprospecting for special metabolites, aiming to apply substances that are naturally produced by plants, animals, microorganisms, and other sources with the purposes related to their defense and perpetuation of the species in biochemical applications. Many well-known compounds were derived or obtained directly from natural sources, e.g., morphine, penicillin, acetyl salicylic acid, and captopril. From a historical perspective, traditional medicine and traditional cuisine uses these substances in the form of extracts or preparations for many uses in biological activities, such as antibiotics, antivirals, anti-inflammatories or antifungals. Resistance to commercial substances has even made ethnopharmacology an exceptional source of molecules that can be used to treat neglected or multidrug-resistant diseases.

In a scenario where multi-resistance of microorganisms and fungi occurs, the chemistry of natural products, as well as ethnopharmacology becomes necessary. The main goal of this field involves creating alternatives for industry, changes in market and atomic economies, using sources originating directly from nature. Several techniques for removing, purifying, identifying, and applying natural products are possible, in addition to the fact that the dry extract itself is a viable alternative for creating new strategies for pharmacological purposes. In this sense, this collection aims to collect original articles devoted to new methods, new approaches, or trends to assay, identify, and study the mechanisms of special metabolites in natural products, crude mixtures, isolated compounds, or final products derived from ethnopharmacology against fungal diseases. Review articles are also welcome, especially those describing topics related to trends and challenges in drug discovery, biophysical characterization of the interaction target-drugs, and analytical chemistry applied to biologically active natural products.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:
• New trends on extraction, purification, isolation, and characterization of antifungal active natural products.
• New biological assays to prove the pharmacological responses against fungi.
• Applications of in silico strategies focusing on potential antifungal lead compounds are welcome if they are combined with an assessment of the antifungal or another activity in vitro.
• Applications of analytical techniques as a tool for bioprospection of biologically active natural products for antifungal proposes.
• New trends in dose-response applied to isolated compounds or crude mixtures on biologically active natural product research.
• Physio-chemical analysis on natural products as a tool for elucidation of antifungal natural products in broth mixtures.
• Bioprospection of vegetal, fungal, microbial, and marine species in looking for new antifungal molecules.
• New challenges in extraction and purification of biologically active natural products applied to research and development industries.
• New studies of the mechanism or action of drugs, preparations or isolated molecules against fungi diseases.
• Biophysical characterization of the interaction between targets and antifungals.
• Natural products as scaffolds for the design and development of semi-synthetic or synthetic antifungals.

All the manuscripts submitted to the collection will need to fully comply with the Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version here). We also expect that the manuscripts follow the standards established in the ConPhyMP statement Front. Pharmacol. 13:953205.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Natural products, ethnopharmacology, fungi, antifungal, bioprospection, medicinal chemistry., drug design, drug development, preclinical assays

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.