MedChemComm

MedChemComm welcomes significant research and review articles in medicinal chemistry and related drug discovery science. We accept both communication and full paper style articles. Research articles published in MedChemComm must show a significant advance on previously published work, or bring new thinking or results which will potentially have a strong impact in their field. Examples of areas within the journal's scope are: Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of novel chemical or biochemical entities. To be suitable for publication these must exhibit significant potential as new pharmacological agents, tools, probes or potential drugs. Modifications of known chemical or biochemical entities that result in a significantly greater understanding of their structure-activity relationships, an improvement of their properties or which provide other information of significant value, for example, the identification of a new target for a known agent. Routine modifications with minimal or no improvement are not suitable for MedChemComm. Note that studies where new or existing compounds are tested as pharmacological agents will only be considered if they are carried out in the presence of clear positive and negative controls and reference is made in the manuscript to the most powerful existing agents. Studies of this type should include a clearly defined and hypothesis-driven compound design rationale. Potential antimicrobial agents should be tested for cytotoxicity and activity against non-related pathogens. Novel methodologies and technologies in the broader chemical and biological sciences (for example, enabling synthetic chemistry, chemical biology, -omics sciences, structural biology, nanoscience) with application to drug discovery. Computational studies are welcome where they significantly advance medicinal chemistry knowledge. Studies that use established computational methods should include an original prediction and be accompanied by new experimental data which validates the prediction made. Studies which report novel computational methodology must demonstrate its use in medicinal chemistry through comparison with experimental data. Computational research that does not clearly relate the results obtained to experimental data or which has no demonstrated utility (or where the utility is unlikely to significantly advance the field) is not suitable for MedChemComm. Please note that docking studies presented without experimental data are not suitable for publication in the journal. Studies which examine the effect of the molecular structure of a compound on pharmacokinetic behaviour and pharmacodynamics. Note that studies which focus solely on drug delivery agents are not suitable for publication in MedChemComm. To help editors and referees assess the significance of each submitted manuscript we ask all authors on submission to provide a brief statement of significance. This should contain one sentence to summarise the most important finding(s) in the manuscript and a second sentence to say why this is a significant advance in the field. This significance statement should focus specifically on the importance of the piece of research being submitted, rather than the importance of the field.