Tropical Protozoan Diseases: Natural Product Drug Discovery and Development

Call for Papers

Chagas disease, human African trypanosomiasis, malaria, and leishmaniasis are tropical protozoan diseases that affect many millions of people worldwide. Currently, there is a lack of effective, safe, and affordable therapies for their treatments. Natural products may serve as novel agents, lead or scaffold for the development into urgently needed efficacious drugs.

We invite authors to submit original research articles and review articles that will contribute to the discovery of natural compounds with high potential against these protozoan parasites. We are particularly interested in articles dealing with in vivo assays and those that look into different mechanisms of action. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Recent advances in the identification of natural compounds (plants, fungi, or marine organisms) with antiprotozoal activity against Trypanosoma cruzi, T. brucei, Plasmodium falciparum, and Leishmania sp.
• Identification of specific targets within key metabolic pathways
• Development of methods of rational drug design
• Advances in structure-activity relationship studies (SAR and QSAR) of bioactive compounds
• Optimization of antiprotozoal activity of natural molecules by chemical modifications

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/ecam/proto/ according to the following timetable:

Lead Guest Editor

• Liliana Muschietti, Department of Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Guest Editors

• Roser Vila, Facultat de Fármacia, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
• Valdir Cechinel Filho, Núcleo de Investigações Químico-Farmacêuticas (NIQFAR-CCS), Universidade do Vale do Itajaí, Itajaí, SC, Brazil
• William Setzer, Department of Chemistry, The University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL 35899, USA