Dear Colleagues,

As the Editor-in-Chief of Marine Drugs, I am pleased to announce the winner of the Marine Drugs 2023 Travel Award.

The award has been granted to Dr. Melissa Cadelis, a post-doctoral fellow at the School of Medical Sciences, University of Auckland, New Zealand.

As the awardee, she will receive an honorarium of CHF 1000, and an electronic certificate.

With so many high-quality applicants, the evaluation process and final decision were incredibly challenging. We would like to thank all of the applicants for submitting their diverse and fascinating range of research topics. On behalf of the Assessment Committee, I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate the winner on her accomplishments.

Prof. Dr. Bill J. Baker
Editor-in-Chief, Marine Drugs

Dear Colleagues,

As the Editor-in-Chief of Marine Drugs, I am pleased to announce the winners of the Marine Drugs 2021 Best Paper Award.

The awards have been granted to:

Articles:

Putative Inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease from A Library of Marine Natural Products: A Virtual Screening and Molecular Modeling Study
By Davide Gentile, Vincenzo Patamia, Angela Scala, Maria Teresa Sciortino, Anna Piperno and Antonio Rescifina
Mar. Drugs 2020, 18(4), 225; doi: 10.3390/md18040225

Antioxidant Peptides from the Protein Hydrolysate of Monkfish (Lophius litulon) Muscle: Purification, Identification, and Cytoprotective Function on HepG2 Cells Damage by H₂O₂
By Xiao-Meng Hu, Yu-Mei Wang, Yu-Qin Zhao, Chang-Feng Chi and Bin Wang
Mar. Drugs 2020, 18(3), 153; doi: 10.3390/md18030153

Reviews:

Marine Natural Products: A Source of Novel Anticancer Drugs
By Shaden A. M. Khalifa, Nizar Elias, Mohamed A. Farag, Lei Chen, Aamer Saeed, Mohamed-Elamir F. Hegazy, Moustafa S. Moustafa, Aida Abd El-Wahed, Saleh M. Al-Mousawi, Syed G. Musharraf, Fang-Rong Chang, Arihiro Iwasaki, Kiyotake Suenaga, Muaaz Alajlani, Ulf Göransson and Hesham R. El-Seedi
Mar. Drugs 2019, 17(9), 491; doi: 10.3390/md17090491

Microalgal Carotenoids: A Review of Production, Current Markets, Regulations, and Future Direction
By Lucie Novoveská, Michael E. Ross, Michele S. Stanley, Rémi Pradelles, Virginie Wasiolek and Jean-François Sassi
Mar. Drugs 2019, 17(11), 640; doi: 10.3390/md17110640

Each winner (corresponding author) will receive CHF 500, a certificate, and the opportunity to publish a paper free of charge in Marine Drugs before the end of July 2023.

On behalf of the assessment committee, I congratulate the winners on their accomplishments. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the nominated research groups of the exceptional papers above for their contributions to Marine Drugs, and the Award Committee for voting and for their assistance with these awards.

Editor-in-Chief
Prof. Dr. Orazio Taglialatela-Scafati, Marine Drugs

Dear colleagues,

As the Editor-in-Chief of Marine Drugs, we are pleased to announce the winner of the Marine Drugs 2021–2022 Travel Award.

The award has been granted to Dr. Qihao Wu, a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Chemistry, Yale University, USA.

With so many high-quality applicants, the evaluation process and final decision were incredibly challenging. We would like to thank all of the applicants for submitting their diverse and fascinating range of research topics. On behalf
of the Assessment Committee, I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate the winners on their accomplishments.

Prof. Dr. Orazio Taglialatela-Scafati
Editor-in-Chief, Marine Drugs

Dear Colleagues,

As the Editor-in-Chief of Marine Drugs, it is my great pleasure to announce the winners of the Marine Drugs 2021 Best PhD Thesis Award. This prize has been awarded to two PhD students who have produced highly anticipated potential theses in recognition of their academic excellence.

The awards have been granted to:

“Marine Biorefinery: Valorisation of Algae into Advanced Products” by Dr. Ana Margarida Ferreira Martins, Chemistry Department, University of Aveiro, Portugal.

“Antibiotics from the Abyss: Establishing the Bristol Sponge Microbiome Collection as an Antibiotic Discovery Pipeline” by Dr. Henry Stennett, School of Biochemistry, University of Bristol, UK.

Each winner will be awarded 1000 CHF and a certificate, as well as an offer to publish a featured paper in Marine Drugs with the article processing charge (APC) waived before the end of June 2023.

On behalf of the evaluation committee, I would like to congratulate the winners on their remarkable accomplishments. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the nominated research groups for their contributions to Marine Drugs and the Award Committee for their participation.

Prof. Dr. Orazio Taglialatela-Scafati
Editor-in-Chief, Marine Drugs

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Marine Drugs 2020 Outstanding Reviewer Awards. The Marine Drugs Editorial Board and Editorial Team gratefully acknowledge the time and energy dedicated by our team of reviewers in checking the manuscripts submitted to Marine Drugs. It is due to their efforts that the high quality of the journal and quick turnaround are maintained.

Winners:

Prof. Dr. Alexander N. Shikov
Saint-Petersburg Institute of Pharmacy, Saint Petersburg (ex Leningrad), Russian Federation, Russia
Research Interests: natural products; sea urchins; algae; chemistry; pharmacology

Prof. Dr. Olivier Thomas
Marine Biodiscovery, School of Chemistry and Ryan Institute, National University of Ireland Galway (NUI Galway), University Road, Ireland
Research Interests: marine natural products; marine toxins; harmful algal blooms; dinoflagellates; cyanobacteria; sponges; environmental metabolomics; marine chemical ecology

Kind regards,

Prof. Dr. Orazio Taglialatela-Scafati
Editor-in-Chief, Marine Drugs

We are pleased to announce that the following two research articles and two review papers were selected as the winners of the Marine Drugs Best Paper Awards 2019 from all the papers published between 1 January 2017 and 31 December 2018:

Article: Chitosan Nanoparticles as a Mucoadhesive Drug Delivery System for Ocular Administration
Mariana M. Silva, Raquel Calado, Joana Marto, Ana Bettencourt, António J. Almeida, and Lídia M. D. Gonçalves
Marine Drugs 2017, 15, 370; doi:10.3390/md15120370
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-3397/15/12/370

Article: Chemical Reactivity Properties, pKa Values, AGEs Inhibitor Abilities and Bioactivity Scores of the Mirabamides A–H Peptides of Marine Origin Studied by Means of Conceptual DFT
Juan Frau, Norma Flores-Holguín, and Daniel Glossman-Mitnik
Marine Drugs 2018, 16, 302; doi:10.3390/md16090302
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-3397/16/9/302

Review: Marine Fish Proteins and Peptides for Cosmeceuticals: A Review
Jayachandran Venkatesan, Sukumaran Anil, Se-Kwon Kim and Min Suk Shim
Marine Drugs 2017, 15, 143; doi:10.3390/md15050143
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-3397/15/5/143

Review: Marine Sponge Natural Products with Anticancer Potential: An Updated Review
Cinzia Calcabrini, Elena Catanzaro, Anupam Bishayee, Eleonora Turrini, and Carmela Fimognari
Marine Drugs 2017, 15, 310; doi:10.3390/md15100310
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-3397/15/10/310

We considered the above papers to represent valuable contributions to Marine Drugs and the scientific literature. We congratulate and thank the authors for having chosen Marine Drugs to publish their work.

In recognition of their accomplishment, the authors will collectively receive the privilege of publishing an additional paper free of charge in open-access format in Marine Drugs after the standard peer-review procedure. A cash award of 500 CHF will also be awarded for each of the winning papers.

Kind Regards,
Marine Drugs Editorial Office

Dear Colleagues,

The Marine Drugs Editorial Board and Editorial Team would like to gratefully acknowledge the time and energy given by reviewers in checking manuscripts submitted to the journal. It is thanks to their efforts that the high quality of the journal and quick submission-to-publication process are maintained. The median time to first decision is currently an impressive 15 days, and the median time to publication is 33 days, which is all because of you.

Please join us in congratulating the two referees below, who will receive the “Marine Drugs 2019 Outstanding Reviewer Awards” in recognition of the quantity, timeliness, and quality of their reviews in 2018–2019. Both winners will receive 500 CHF and a certificate for their outstanding review work.

Prof. Dr. Eva Zubia
Department of Organic Chemistry, Faculty of Marine and Environmental Sciences, University of Cadiz, Spain

Dr. Naoki Morita
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan

Marine Drugs (ISSN 1660-3397) is the leading peer-reviewed, open-access journal on the research, development, and production of biologically and therapeutically active compounds from the sea, published monthly online by MDPI. The journal is covered by leading indexing services, including Science Citation Index Expanded (Web of Science; its 2018 Impact Factor is 3.772 (ranked in Q1, in JCR category “Chemistry, Medicinal”)) and in Scopus (CiteScore (2018 Scopus data): 4.57, which equals rank 14/146 in “Drug Discovery”). For further details, please refer to https://www.mdpi.com/journal/marinedrugs.

Kind Regards,
Marine Drugs Editorial Office

Dear Colleagues,

the Editor-in-Chief of Marine Drugs, I am pleased to announce that the co-winners of the 2019 Marine Drugs Award for Young Investigators are:

Dr. Sergey Dyshlovoy, Senior research scientist, Department of Oncology, Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplantation with Section Pneumology, Hubertus Wald-Tumorzentrum, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, 20251 Hamburg, Germany; Laboratory of Marine Natural Products Chemistry, G.B. Elyakov Pacific Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Far-East Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, 69002 Vladivostok, Russian Federation. Dr. Dyshlovoy’s research is focused on: (1) The anticancer activity of marine secondary metabolites; (2) biochemistry and cell biology to investigate the mechanisms of action of marine anticancer compounds.

Dr. Usama R. Abdelmosen, Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacognosy, Minia University, Egypt. Dr. Abdelmosen’s research is focused on: (1) Antiinfective natural products from sponge-associated actinomycetes; (2) metabolomics and genomics tools in the identification of secondary metabolites;

The two co-winners will share 2000 Swiss Francs (each receive 1000 CHF) and both will receive a certificate and an offer to publish a paper free-of-charge in Marine Drugs, after peer review.

I want to thank all the excellent young scientists sending applications for this award: their brilliant CVs made the choice very difficult. These young colleagues are strongly encouraged to continue their research with enthusiasm; I am sure that they will guarantee a bright future for our research field!

Marine Drugs Editor-in-Chief,
Prof. Orazio Taglialatela-Scafati, Ph.D.

Dear Colleagues,

As the Editor-in-Chief of Marine Drugs, I am pleased to announce that the winner of 2016 Marine Drugs Award for Young Investigator is Dr. John MacMillan, Associate Professor, Chilton/Bell Scholar in Biochemistry, Martha Steiner, Professor in Medical Science, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas.

Dr. MacMillan’s research is currently focused on four major areas: (1) Marine Microbiology and Generation of a Natural Product Fraction Library; (2) Probing the Mechanism of Action of Natural Products; (3) Integration of Natural Products and High-Content Phenotypic Screening; and (4) Development of New Methods for Structure Determination and Biocatalysis. More information is available at a dedicated website: www.utsouthwestern.edu/labs/macmillan/research

Marine Drugs Editor-in-Chief,
Alejandro M.S. Mayer, Ph.D., M.S. Ed.