One Health Biotechnology Approaches to Infectious Disease Pharmacology: Emerging Bioactive Agents for Antimicrobial and Vector-Borne Disease Control

The search for new anti-infectives increasingly looks to natural sources. However, producing and characterizing these compounds with clinical consistency remains a bottleneck. Raw plant extracts vary by geography and harvest, yields are inconsistent, and active chemical fractions are easily lost. Moving from an initial in vitro screening to a reproducible, pharmacologically characterized therapeutic agent requires reliable production pipelines.This Research Topic addresses this challenge by examining biotechnology as a driver of drug discovery and production. Specifically, we explore how microbial fermentation, enzymatic bioconversion, and the bioprocessing of agro-industrial residues can yield consistent, scalable bioactive compounds with clear anti-infective pharmacology. Integrating a One Health perspective, we seek to understand how ecological and agricultural materials can be biotechnologically transformed into human therapeutics.The disease focus covers vector-borne diseases such as malaria, Chagas disease, leishmaniasis, and dengue, alongside multidrug-resistant bacterial and fungal strains. These are high-burden conditions with limited pharmacological pipelines, where new, consistently produced chemical matter is needed.We welcome submissions that investigate the pharmacological pathways of these biotechnology-derived agents. We do not accept broad screenings of crude extracts lacking mechanistic data, nor do we accept studies on vector biology or field-based pest control without a human pharmacological endpoint.Suitable subtopics for submission include:• Pharmacological mechanisms and cellular targets of biotechnology-derived antimicrobial and antiparasitic compounds.• Enzymatic bioconversion and fermentation strategies for the synthesis of bioactive anti-infectives.• In vitro and in vivo pharmacology of bioprocessed compounds targeting vector-borne pathogens.• Structure-activity relationships, safety profiles, and resistance barriers of biotechnology-derived therapeutic agents.• Comparative pharmacology assessing the efficacy and purity of biotechnologically produced compounds against raw natural extracts. Topic editors: Rosemeire Cristina Linhari Rodrigues Pietro, Rafaela Fantatto Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83967/one-health-biotechnology-approaches-to-infectious-disease-pharmacology-emerging-bioactive-agents-for-antimicrobial-and-vector-borne-disease-control