Dear Colleagues,

Central Nervous System diseases, including mental and neurodegenerative diseases, constitute a serious medical, economic and social problem. They are amongst the most costly medical conditions and have been estimated to incur health care costs of EUR 386 billion annually in the European Union. Aging of the population and the growing pace of life contribute to an increased occurrence of both mental and neurodegenerative diseases, particularly in developed countries. Despite significant progress in the treatment of these diseases, the available medicines mainly target the symptoms. In the case of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson's disease, currently used drugs are only able to slow the progress of disease. Many schizophrenia patients are treatment-resistant, while others do not take antipsychotics regularly because of their neurological and metabolic side effects. Moreover, antidepressant drugs have a delayed onset of action, meaning that depression and its associated disability and potential risk of suicide will continue for many patients.

In the light of the above, there is an urgent need to develop better treatments for mental and neurodegenerative diseases. This special issue of Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark is thus dedicated to highlighting recent progress in the discovery of active compounds in the CNS. These range from in silico studies to the development of new compounds and their preclinical and clinical evaluation.

Prof. Agnieszka A. Kaczor

Guest Editor

Manuscripts should be submitted via our online editorial system at https://imr.propub.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to start your submission. Manuscripts can be submitted now or up until the deadline. All papers will go through peer-review process. Accepted papers will be published in the journal (as soon as accepted) and meanwhile listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, reviews as well as short communications are preferred. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office to announce on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts will be thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. Please visit the Instruction for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) in this open access journal is 2500 USD. Submitted manuscripts should be well formatted in good English.