Special Issue "Marine Natural Products: The Ongoing Challenges in the Field of Stem Cells and Cancer Therapy"

A special issue of Marine Drugs (ISSN 1660-3397).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2023) | Viewed by 1011

Special Issue Editors

Department of Biological Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technologies (STEBICEF), University of Palermo, Via Archirafi, 32-90123 Palermo, Italy
Interests: marine alkaloids; heterocycles; drug discovery; synthesis; bioactive compounds; antitumor activity; antibiofilm activity; and kinase inhibitors
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Department of Biological, Chemical, and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technologies (STEBICEF), University of Palermo, Via Archirafi 32, 90123 Palermo, Italy
Interests: marine alkaloids; drug discovery; cancer; anticancer drugs; small molecules kinase inhibitors; biofilm inhibitors
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Despite the recent progress in the management of cancer patients and in the development of targeted therapies, cancer remains a major threat to human health and one of the leading death’s causes worldwide.

Drug resistance, therapy failure, and consequent cancer recurrence are the main factors that contribute to the high cancer mortality, making it crucial to identify novel therapeutic options, including new drugs. Growing evidence supports the critical role of cancer stem cells (CSCs) behind the mechanisms for this deadly disease, due to their ability to generate heterogeneous lineages of cancer cells based on their self-renewal, infinite division, and multi-directional differentiation potential.

In the past decade, the marine environment has renewed interest as an unfailing source of compounds that can be used as leads for the synthesis of new molecules of pharmaceutical interest, proving to be one of the most successful strategies for the discovery of new drugs. They present greater efficiency and specificity when it comes to interacting with biological target sites (e.g., receptors, DNA, protein kinases), exhibiting novel mechanisms of action, and modulating distinct intracellular signaling pathways, with fewer side effects.

As Guest Editors for this Special Issue, entitled “Marine natural products: the ongoing challenges in the field of stem cells and cancer therapy”, we are pleased to invite all academic and industry researchers working in this field to submit reviews or original articles highlighting the biological activities of known or novel marine-derived compounds with potential tumor-suppression effects on cancer cells and cancer stem cells.

Prof. Dr. Patrizia Diana
Dr. Daniela Carbone
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Marine Drugs is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • cancer
  • drug discovery
  • marine-derived compounds
  • cancer cells
  • cancer stem cells
  • drug resistance
  • anti-tumor activity
  • synthesis
  • targeted therapies
  • therapeutic drugs

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

Article
Structural Manipulations of Marine Natural Products Inspire a New Library of 3-Amino-1,2,4-Triazine PDK Inhibitors Endowed with Antitumor Activity in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma
Mar. Drugs 2023, 21(5), 288; https://doi.org/10.3390/md21050288 - 04 May 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1179
Abstract
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the main aggressive types of cancer, characterized by late prognosis and drug resistance. Among the main factors sustaining PDAC progression, the alteration of cell metabolism has emerged to have a key role in PDAC cell proliferation, [...] Read more.
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the main aggressive types of cancer, characterized by late prognosis and drug resistance. Among the main factors sustaining PDAC progression, the alteration of cell metabolism has emerged to have a key role in PDAC cell proliferation, invasion, and resistance to standard chemotherapeutic agents. Taking into account all these factors and the urgency in evaluating novel options to treat PDAC, in the present work we reported the synthesis of a new series of indolyl-7-azaindolyl triazine compounds inspired by marine bis-indolyl alkaloids. We first assessed the ability of the new triazine compounds to inhibit the enzymatic activity of pyruvate dehydrogenase kinases (PDKs). The results showed that most of derivatives totally inhibit PDK1 and PDK4. Molecular docking analysis was executed to predict the possible binding mode of these derivatives using ligand-based homology modeling technique. Evaluation of the capability of new triazines to inhibit the cell growth in 2D and 3D KRAS-wild-type (BxPC-3) and KRAS-mutant (PSN-1) PDAC cell line, was carried out. The results showed the capacity of the new derivatives to reduce cell growth with a major selectivity against KRAS-mutant PDAC PSN-1 on both cell models. These data demonstrated that the new triazine derivatives target PDK1 enzymatic activity and exhibit cytotoxic effects on 2D and 3D PDAC cell models, thus encouraging further structure manipulation for analogs development against PDAC. Full article
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