The Influence of Brazilian Biodiversity on Searching for Human Use Pharmaceuticals

Abstract

This relatively short review will cover the history of some potential drug entities whose beginnings were from Brazilian flora and fauna that led to scientific findings many years later that could not even have been thought of at the time of their initial discovery. The first two are the discoveries of the effects of peptidic toxins from the highly poisonous snake Bothrops jararaca upon the control of bradykinins that led to the angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors, and the identification of pederin from the blister beetle Paederus species that 50 plus years later led to brand new discoveries as the source of many marine sponge metabolites. All occurred well before the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), in 1992. Then come discussions on lapachol and its congeners and then the potential for the investigation of microbes that are associated with insects, plants and marine invertebrates and their control of the syntheses of novel metabolites with pharmaceutical potential. The review finishes with comments on the biodiversity programs that São Paulo State has put in place and how they are materially aiding in investigations of Brazilian flora and fauna but under conditions that are CBD-compliant.

Screening and identification of novel biologically active natural compounds

“…Discussions centered around such organisms will be the major focus of the rest of this review for the relatively simple reasons that a large percentage of all marine invertebrate-sourced natural products are the result of the interplay between microbes and their hosts. In addition, it is now becoming evident that a similar relationship may occur with a significant number of plants, in particular with their fungal endophytes, and there are now many examples of insects using microbes as sources of defensive metabolites 7 .…”

“…In this paper, the group demonstrated, by the isolation of single bacterial cells from the whole sponge macerate, that the previously unknown and currently uncultivated microbe had the genomic potential to produce the widely disparate structures previously found, including the very potent agent onnamide ( Figure 1 , [1]), a pederin-based ( Figure 1 , [2]) molecule originally found in the Brazilian blister beetle. The story of the work performed over more than 30 years that led to the identification of pederin as a microbial product was covered in a recent publication 7 . The techniques of DNA amplification from a single microbe through to the determination of biosynthetic methods are now being applied to other marine-derived secondary metabolites, and two recent papers from the Piel group should be consulted for current information 10 , 11 .…”

Mimosa tenuiflora (Willd.) Poir e Anadenanthera colubrina como alternativas no tratamento da adicção às drogas

“…Como consequência, o Brasil é uma das maiores reservas naturais para Novas Entidades Químicas (NEQ) com potencial terapêutico ainda a serem explorados (Albuquerque et al, 2007;Cartaxo et al, 2010;Newman, 2017).…”

Brazilian medicinal plants with corroborated anti-inflammatory activities: a review

“…Brazil has a wide variety of ecosystems and shelters in the Amazon region, which is the largest tropical forest in the world, as well as in the cerrado vegetation, which is known as the world’s most biologically diverse savanna (Matheus et al. 2017 ; Newman 2017 ). Due to this great biodiversity, including the Atlantic forest and other biomes, many Brazilian medicinal plants have not been further investigated, and this opens the opportunity to explore these plants for the discovery of new secondary metabolites that have the capacity to interfere with the inflammatory response (Bolzani et al.…”