Dear Colleagues,

Despite significant advancements in the field of drug discovery and vaccine engineering, infectious diseases remain one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. After pathogens contacting directly or indirectly with host cells, pathogens-derived effectors/toxins function to suppress or escape host immune recognition and immune activation, or to damage normal tissues. In the meantime, hosts have evolved physical and immunological ways to handle such challenges. Understanding these host–pathogen interactions is vital for investigating and analyzing the different stages of pathogenesis, thereby leading to the successful development of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines to counter infection and stop disease progression. In the post-COVID-19 era, humans have never been so eager to reveal the secrets of viral diseases.

Goal

Viruses are among the leading causes of death globally, particularly among children and young adults. Some cell-surface proteins have been exploited as host cell entry receptors by a multitude of pathogenic microbes for mediating host–pathogen interactions. The diversity in the structure and function of the viral factors also define the virus’ interaction with hosts. Deciphering these host–pathogen interaction mechanisms has enabled researchers to understand novel constituents of various cell signaling events.

Scope of the Special Issue

The scope of this Special Issue is broad, spanning molecular mechanisms of viral infection and related diseases including but not limited to studies of virology, viral infection, structure and function studies of viral molecules, host–virus interactions, host immune responses in viral diseases, viral disease and cancer, clinical studies of viral infection, and vaccine design and evaluation.

This Special Issue welcomes a variety of manuscript types including original research papers, methods papers, reviews, mini-reviews, perspectives, hypotheses and theoretical works, case reports, letters to the editor, brief research reports, commentaries, opinions, editorials, and technology and codes. Authors need to follow the authors’ guidelines to prepare their manuscripts.

Prof. Dr. Tengchuan Jin
Prof. Dr. Ke Peng
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Pathogens is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• viral infection
• virus–host interaction
• structure and function studies of viral molecules
• clinical and basic studies of viral diseases
• antibody therapy of viral diseases
• virus mutation and evolution
• vaccine design
• virus replication