fiocruz: tithonia - The use of biodiversity as source of new chemical entities etc.

Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Fiocruz ISSN: 1678-8060 EISSN: 1678-8060 Vol. 100, Num. 6, 2005, pp. 575-606

Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Vol. 100, No. 6, October 2005, pp. 575-606

http://www.bioline.org.br/request?oc05132

The use of biodiversity as source of new chemical entities against defined molecular targets for treatment of malaria, tuberculosis, and T-cell mediated diseases - A Review

Luiz Augusto Basso/********/⁺, Luiz Hildebrando Pereira da Silva*, Arthur Germano Fett-Neto**, Walter Filgueira de Azevedo Junior********, Ícaro de Souza Moreira***, Mário Sérgio Palma****, João Batista Calixto*****, Spartaco Astolfi Filho******, Ricardo Ribeiro dos Santos*******, Milena Botelho Pereira Soares*******, Diógenes Santiago Santos********/⁺

Faculdade de Biociências ********Faculdade de Farmácia, Centro de Pesquisas em Biologia Molecular e Funcional,
Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Ipiranga 6681, Tecnopuc-Prédio 92A, 90619-900 Porto Alegre,
RS, Brasil *Centro de Pesquisas em Medicina Tropical, Porto Velho, RO, Brasil **Centro de Biotecnologia, Laboratório de Fisiologia Vegetal, UFRGS, Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil ***Departamento de Química Orgânica e Inorgânica, UFCe, Fortaleza, CE, Brasil ****Laboratório de Biologia Estrutural e Zooquímica, Unesp, Rio Claro, SP, Brasil *****Departamento de Farmacologia, UFSC, Florianópolis, SC, Brasil ******Universidade do Amazonas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biotecnologia, Manaus, AM, Brasil *******Fundação Gonçalo Moniz-Fiocruz, Salvador, BA, Brasil
⁺Corresponding authors. E-mail: luiz.basso@pucrs.br or diogenes@pucrs.br

Financial support: Finep, CNPq, Capes, Instituto do Milênio. All the authors are research fellowship holders of CNPq.

Received 20 May 2005
Accepted 3 August 2005

Code Number: oc05132

Corpora non agunt nisi fixata (Paul Ehrlich, 1909)

The modern approach to the development of new chemical entities against complex diseases, especially the neglected endemic diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria, is based on the use of defined molecular targets. Among the advantages, this approach allows (i) the search and identification of lead compounds with defined molecular mechanisms against a defined target (e.g. enzymes from defined pathways), (ii) the analysis of a great number of compounds with a favorable cost/benefit ratio, (iii) the development even in the initial stages of compounds with selective toxicity (the fundamental principle of chemotherapy), (iv) the evaluation of plant extracts as well as of pure substances. mais em elected on the basis of traditional medicinal use yielded positive activity in the order of 2 to 5 times higher than random screening (Lewis & Elvin-Lewis 1995). Ecological observation is another way to obtain leads to plant bioactivities. The absence of predation in areas infested with herbivores, for example, can indicate the presence of toxic defense compounds. A variation of this approach is zoopharmacognosy, which proposes the selection of plant species regularly ingested by animals, mostly primates, for reducing pain, microbial or worm infestations (Berry et al. 1995).

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