Natural product chemistry is an inexhaustible source of biologically active compounds, used in most industry lines, especially on the development of medicines and drug discovery, pharmacological products, food industry, polymers, and others. The natural products are sources of special metabolites, such as alkaloids, saponins, neolignans, lignans, flavonoids, etc, produced by the vegetal or marine organisms on their secondary metabolism. Historically, human beings used these compounds in folk culinary and folk medicine as the font of beneficial substances, mainly extracts, that as responsible for a great diversity of biological effects, e.g. antibiotic, anti-inflammatory, increased immunity, antifungal, increasing the life quality of the consumers. However, the resistance of commercial drugs boosted the search for novel substances, mainly acquired from natural products, that can contribute to the treatment of traditional, neglected, and multiresistant diseases.
In the scenario where drug discovery becomes necessary, analytical methods employed in natural products, especially ones that can be used in the crude mixture, can help the industries of research and development on bioprospection of vegetal or marine species. The development of electrochemical methods, spectroscopical methods, and spectrometric methods can be an important tool in the investigation of novel drugs obtained from natural products. This Topic is often overlooked by pharmacologists. Results will be very different depending on what the exact characteristics of the extract are and this is also overlooked. This Research Topic aiming to collect Original Research devoted to new methods, new approaches, or trends using instrumental chemistry to characterize, validate and quantify special metabolites in natural products, crude mixtures, isolated compounds, or final products biologically active. Review Articles are also welcome, especially issues describing topics related to trends and challenges in 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 biologically active natural products.
• Electrochemical analysis as a tool for identification, monitoring, and extracting biologically active natural products.
• Applications of infrared spectroscopy in research on biologically active natural products.
• Applications of mass spectrometry as a tool for bioprospection of biologically active natural products.
• New trends in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy applied to isolated compounds or crude mixtures on biologically active natural product research.
• Physic-chemical analysis on natural products as a tool for elucidation of biologically active natural products in broth mixtures.
• Bioprospection of vegetal and marine species in looking for new biological molecules.
• New challenges in extraction and purification of biologically active natural products applied to research and development industries.
Manuscripts including research articles, hypotheses and theories, methods, and reviews (mini-review, review, meta-analysis) are welcome. Please note that all research dealing with plant extracts or other natural substances/compounds, the composition and the stability of the study material must be described in sufficient detail.
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).
