Vanderlan da S. Bolzani
Sao Paulo State University, Brazil
Title: Natural products from Brazilian Biodiversity, a source of new templates for medicinal chemistry
Biography
Biography: Vanderlan da S. Bolzani
Abstract
Plant species biosynthesize a wide variety of secondary metabolites, which play a vital role in the survival of the species themselves as well as in the preservation of ecological equilibrium of the ecosystems. They also are very important to regulate several functions that are fundamental to the plant/plant and plant/insect interaction, resistance against pests and diseases; attraction of pollinators, and interaction with symbiotic microorganisms. Therefore, natural compounds are treasure for synthesis and drug discovery new leads. The vast and biologically-rich Brazilian biodiversity represents an outstanding opportunity for the development of biology and chemistry sciences in many different research areas, including drug discovery. species exist in Brazil.
Within this scenario, the BIOTA/FAPESP Program was created in March 1999. Among the several objectives of this program, one goal is the search for bioactive compounds from Cerrado and Atlantic Forest biomes, aimed at to find new lead molecules. Some examples of lead molecules obtained in NuBBE Lab. Will be highlight showing the importance of tropical biodiversity for drug discovery. The 1st natural products data base from the Brazilian biodiversity also has been organized and we have used these data. Some natural products were identified to be synthetize aimed at major concentration of the compound for further pharmacological and toxicological assays, or to prepare synthetic derivatives aimed to improve the active already detected.