Research with chemistry and pharmacology of natural products in Brazil: Past, present and future

Resumo

Living organisms (bacteria, fungi, lichens, algae, worms, mushrooms, higher plants, and aquatic and terrestrial animals) produce a plethora of chemical compounds, the ‘natural products’, that lie at the heart of an ecological interaction, acting as molecular messengers in defense, attack, sexual attraction, territorial and trail marking, in pollination, as venoms, etc. Eventually, human beings make use of them for their own purposes as food additives, flavoring, cosmetics, fragrances, hallucinogens, in pest control, and as therapeutic agents. The present review compares the participation of Brazilian scientists in the chemistry and pharmacology of natural products with that of other scientists from 69 countries in five continents in 36 selected journals. It also shows the analogy between the Human Development Index (HDI) and the rank of the countries with the number published articles. The search was performed in the Web of Knowledge by cross-selecting the names of each journal with that of each country for the period 1945-2013.