Potential Therapeutical Compounds and Scientific Performance of Brazilian Researchers

Abstract

This new supplement of issue 88 of the Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (AABC) gathers both original and review papers from outstanding Brazilian and international researchers. Several of them show compounds acting as protective agents in different diseases, including selenium and selenium-containing compounds. Selenium is an essential nutrient for human metabolism, especially due its antioxidant properties (Maldonado et al. 2012, Liu et al. 2013, Noguchi 2016. In this context, Ellwanger et al. (2016) revisited some biological functions of selenium and the impact of a dysregulation of its levels in the organism. In the same paper, the authors also discussed the beneficial effects of selenium in animal models of Parkinson's disease, a severe neurodegenerative disease. Moreover, Oliveira et al. (2016) demonstrated that the organoselenium compound HBD is atheroprotective by preventing Cu 2+