Biodiversidade: fonte potencial para a descoberta de fármacos

Quim. Nova, Vol. 32, No. 3, 679-688, 2009
Biodiversidade: fonte potencial para a descoberta de fármacos
Eliezer J. Barreiro#
Departamento de Fármacos, Faculdade de Farmácia, Centro de Ciências da Saúde, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, CP 68006,
21944-910 Rio de Janeiro - RJ, Brasil
Vanderlan da Silva Bolzani*##
Instituto de Química, Universidade Estadual Paulista, Rua Francisco Degni, s/n, 14800-900, Araraquara - SP, Brasil
Recebido em 16/1/09; aceito em 6/4/09; publicado na web em 9/4/09

BIODIVERSITY: POTENTIAL SOURCE FOR DRUG DISCOVERY. In economic terms, biodiversity transcends the boundaries usually given to conventional industries because it is a valuable source of biological and chemical data of great use to drug discovery.
Certainly, the use of natural products has been the single most successful strategy in the discovery of novel medicines, and most of the medical breakthroughs are based on natural products. Half of the top 20 best-selling drugs are natural products, and their total sales amounted to US$ 16 billions shows the importance of natural products, which is evidenced by the new chemical entities
(NCE) approved by regulatory authorities around the world in the past decade. Recently, the approval of the alkaloid galanthamine as a medicine to treat Alzheimer’s disease shows that natural compounds from plants will continue to reach the market. The huge biological diversity of the Brazilian biomes, by its ability to generate new knowledge and technological innovation can be a fantastic alternative as raw material for drug discovery.
Keywords: biodiversity; natural products; drugs; medicinal chemistry.

PREÂMBULO
Plantas, fungos, insetos, organismos marinhos e bactérias são fontes importantes de substâncias biologicamente ativas, sendo que a maioria dos fármacos em uso clínico ou são de origem natural ou foram desenvolvidos por síntese química planejada a partir de produtos naturais.1 Embora existam, nos dias atuais,