Dear Colleagues,

With nearly 8000 km of coastline, which ranks as the 16^th longest national coastline in the world, Brazil is known to have unmatched biodiversity. Although the marine zone of Brazil covers an area of 3.5 million km², only approximately 2-3% of the marine biodiversity present in its coastal zone has been inventoried. Interestingly, twenty of the more than 350 species of coral reefs on the planet have been recorded in Brazil, and eight of these are found exclusively in Brazil. Moreover, Brazil is very rich in mangroves, which harbor at least 776 species of fish, birds, molluscs, plants and arthropods. The number of species of crustaceans described on the Brazilian coast reaches 3335. In addition, 1,886 species of molluscs, 1420 of fish and 987 of polychaetes have been already identified.

Following the great success of the previous editions of the Brazilian Symposium of Pharmacognosy, organized by the Brazilian Society of Pharmacognosy, this XIV edition, which expects to welcome more than 500 participants from Brazil and abroad, will be held in the beautiful city of São Luis, the capital of the state of Maranhão in the northeast of Brazil, from 23 to 26 May 2023.

The scientific program of this symposium covers all the aspects of pharmacognosy, including the isolation and structural elucidation of terrestrial and marine natural products, in vitro and in vivo biological/pharmacological activities, quality control of plant and herbal raw materials, ethnobotany/ethnopharmacology, marine pharmacognosy and biotechnology. Detailed topics of the conference can be found on the conference website: www.14sbfgnosia.com/en.

São Luís has the second-largest maritime extension (640 km) of the Brazilian states. São Luís, created originally as Saint-Louis-de-Maragnan, is the only Brazilian state capital founded by France, and it is one of the three Brazilian state capitals located on an island. São Luís has the largest and best-preserved heritage of colonial Portuguese architecture of all of Latin America, and its historic center dating from the 17th century has its original street plan preserved. It was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. The island is known as the "Island of Love" and as "the Brazilian Athens", due to its many poets and writers.

This Special Issue of Marine Drugs “Selected Papers from the XIV Brazilian Symposium on Pharmacognosy” welcomes the submission of previously unpublished manuscripts of original work and reviews in all the above aspects of marine pharmacognosy, including isolation, structure elucidation, biological activity of natural products from marine sources, pharmacological studies of marine extracts and isolated compounds, marine ecological chemistry and metabolomics of marine organisms.

Please note that reports of known compounds from marine-derived organisms will not generally be accepted unless they have relevant biological and pharmacological activities. Furthermore, marine extracts used for in vitro and/or in vivo pharmacological studies must be characterized by analysis of their major compounds (e.g., HPLC fingerprints, HPLC-MS, GC-MS or NMR analyses).

Finally, the organizing committee wishes to welcome participants from all continents to this important scientific gathering in São Luis, Maranhão, Brazil. The editors of this Special Issue hope to receive full paper submissions from 1^st June to 31^st December 2023. We wish you all the best, and we look forward to meeting you in São Luis in May.

Dr. Douglas Siqueira de A Chaves
Dr. Davyson de Lima Moreira
Prof. Dr. Anake Kijjoa
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.