Standardized herbal medicines for the treatment of chronic diseases: machaerium hirtum (Fabaceae)

• Grant number: 11/12693-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date until: January 01, 2012
• End date until: December 31, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Chemistry - Organic Chemistry
• Principal Investigator: Wagner Vilegas
• Grantee: Vinícius Garcia
• Host Institution: Instituto de Química (IQ). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The use of standardized herbal medicines assured with proven efficacy and safety has shown surprising therapeutic results in various countries. However, in Brazil, there are deficiencies in the correct characterization of chemical raw materials and a shortage of pharmacological and toxicological tests of these materials, essential steps to ensure the efficacy and safety of herbal medicines. This project will address the chemical-pharmaceutical study of plants in the State of Sao Paulo. It is intended to develop analytical strategies that will enable qualitative and quantitative standardization of a plant extract, including the identification of classes of substances, chemical markers, or active ingredients. The standardization of extracts enables the comparison of the chemical composition of species belonging to the same genus (avoiding duplication of phytochemicals / pharmacological) as well as planning strategies focused on the isolation of potentially unknown and the investigation of complex extracts, where the fractionation is not feasible. This procedure will start with the clean-up of organic extracts/infusions by solid-phase extraction and/or liquid-liquid extraction, followed by screening by HPLC-PDA. If necessary, will be transposed to scale [semi] preparative for the isolation of target substances in order to obtain substances in purity and quantities suitable for structural characterization, construction of standard curves, generation of a database, and performing bioassays. We will start with Machaerium species (Fabaceae) from Cerrado of São Paulo, with the isolation and identification of substances in plant extracts, together with the pharmacological tests for anti-ulcer activity, anti-inflammatory/analgesic, antimutagenic and mutagenic. According to the literature, some species of Machaerium (Fabaceae) are ethnopharmacological use. This is the case of Machaerium hirtum (Vell.) Steinfeld is a plant whose bark is popularly used against diarrhea, cough, and cancer.(AU)