Research on Therapeutic Prodrugs for Targeted Cancer Therapy
A special issue of Pharmaceutics (ISSN 1999-4923). This special issue belongs to the section "Drug Targeting and Design".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 November 2023) | Viewed by 1327
Special Issue Editors
Interests: prodrugs; targeted therapy; peptide-drug conjugates; therapeutics; diagnostics; theranostics
Interests: prodrugs; targeted therapy; diagnostics; theranostics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Despite scientific breakthroughs within the past decades, cancer remains a dominant cause of mortality worldwide, mainly due to its abnormal metabolism. Each cancer type is closely associated with unique hallmarks within its microenvironment, which can be exploited to distinguish healthy and malignant tumor cells and achieve targeted therapy. Along these lines, prodrugs are often invoked to selectively populate the desired cancer cells with cytotoxic agents, as they can be sculpted as desired to offer a personalized therapeutic approach. Certain markers overexpressed in the tumor microenvironment (receptors, enzymes, hypoxia, pH, ROS) are the main targets for prodrug-based approaches, usually realized via attachment of bioreducible moieties and/or tumor-homing elements (e.g. peptides) to the parent drug. Prodrugs are usually associated with enhanced specificity and pharmacokinetic properties.
This Special Issue aims to highlight the recent advances within the design, synthesis and evaluation of the efficacy and properties of cancer-targeted prodrugs, ultimately intending to advance the field of cancer therapy.
In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but not limited to) the utilization of bio-responsive moieties (e.g. enzyme cleavable groups) and bioconjugation approaches (e.g. peptide-drug conjugation).
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Eirinaios I. Vrettos
Dr. Sankarprasad Bhuniya
Dr. Dawid Dębowski
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. Pharmaceutics 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
- cancer therapy
- prodrug
- peptide-drug conjugate
- synthesis and characterization
- tumor microenvironment
- tumor targeting
