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: