Current Bioactive Compounds

During the past decade, there has been steady progress in the chemotherapy of AIDS due to the availability of more effective antiretroviral drugs. All clinically used antiretroviral drugs belong to either the Protease Inhibitor (PI) or Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor (NRTIs) classes. There are at least five drugs in clinical use from the latter class. However, the scenario is changing due to the emergence of drug resistant HIV-variants. Therefore, a better understanding of drug-HIV-1 RT interactions at the molecular level has become essential. Therefore significant efforts in this field have focused on developing new NNRTIs with a favorable profile of resilience to many drug resistant mutations [1]. Diseases caused by microbial infections are very common worldwide. Infectious diseases are responsible for great number of deaths in the world population. In the past few decades, the development of microbial resistance has led to an increase in the number and severity of infections. Hence, there is a continuous need to explore broad spectrum antimicrobials [2]. The importance of heterocyclic compounds has long been recognized in the field of synthetic organic chemistry. The number of heterocyclic derivatives containing nitrogen and sulfur atom possess broad spectrum of biological activities. This special issue includes five review articles of Heterocyclic Compounds in the field of anti HIV and anti-infective. The objective of this special issue is to provide readers with comprehensive accounts of recent developments in the exciting areas of Medicinal Chemistry especially related to new chemical entities developed as anti HIV and anti-infective agents. I sincerely thank all the reviewers who provided their valuable reviews, authors who contributed well in this special issue and especially Bentham Science Publishers for providing their constant support throughout. Without all these collaborators, this special issue would not have been published.

A special issue on Cannabis sativa L. and cannabinoids: another drop in the deep sea or something more? Scientific literature has been impressively active on this topic with regard to medicine and pharmaceutical: in 2018 more than 400 papers were published on tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), more than 300 on cannabidiol (CBD), and more than 800 on the wide topic of cannabinoids, being endogenous, natural or synthetic [1]. Nevertheless, there is still a less investigated aspect: Cannabis sativa L. itself. This is a key point because beside pure THC derivatives such as nabilon and dronabinol and pure CBD, in America, Australia and in many countries in Europe, authorized varieties of C. sativa female inflorescences represent the drug used in medicine [2, 3]. Actually, more robust knowledge on C. sativa phytocomplex and on the biological interactions between cannabinoids and non-cannabinoids constituents is mandatory. This special issue entitled “Recent trends on Cannabis sativa L. and cannabinoids: pharmacology and clinical applications” primarily takes into account the role of the whole phytocomplex in cannabis pharmacology, also considering non-cannabinoid constituents such as terpenes and flavonoids. The role of C. sativa phytocomplex arises in inflammatory disorders and the paper of Borgonetti et al. discusses the advantages of exploiting the “entourage effect” in neuroinflammatory-related conditions. This issue also highlights the importance of endocannbinoid system (ES) in order to better understand the role of cannabinoids, and in the paper of Brizzi and Pessina, an interesting overview of ES modulators, whether cannabis-derived or not, is given. We wanted to include in this special issue a research paper focused on C. sativa extracts and Corsi et al. showed a non-psychotropic CBD rich extract that displayed in vitro neuroprotective activity and trophic effect on SH-SY5Y cells. If C. sativa’s medicinal role could and should be better understood as this drug contains a peculiar chemical composition, high importance must be given to the extractive procedure of cannabis inflorescences and to the preparations that could be prescribed and used: an overview of galenic preparation methods for medicinal cannabis of Romano and Hazekamp comprehensively takes into account this key point. In Europe, each members of the European Union regulates narcotic drugs in a different way and different scenarios relative to the regulation of cannabis medicinal products exist. We yet published the controversial and not easy to understand Italian normative on herbal products [4], and in this special issue, we included the paper by Minghetti et al. focusing on the Italian regulation for prescribing and dispensing medicinal cannabis. “Recent trends on Cannabis sativa L. and cannabinoids: pharmacology and clinical applications” is a special issue of Current Bioactive Compounds with a clear common thread, composing original researches and in-depth reviews covering different fields of expertise in which the medicinal plant C. sativa, is carefully considered with the belief that the pharmacological potential of this old and at the same time, the new drug, is far to be fully exploited