Three projects with innovative results in areas as different as phytochemistry, new materials and biotechnology have been chosen by the Innovation Agency of the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), Inova, to be presented at the TechConnect Summit 2006. Scheduled for May 8 and 9 in Boston, in the United States, the event brings together representatives of patent offices of American institutions like the University of Boston, the University of California and the University of Minnesota, the University of Stockholm, in Sweden, and the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, amongst others, as well as companies like Basf, IBM, Motorola, Ford and investors in search of good business opportunities.

“It is the first experience we have of taking part in an event of this nature to evaluate the attractiveness of Unicamp's technologies in an international scenario”, says Professor Roberto Lotufo, Inova’s executive director. The participation takes on a special meaning, because it makes it possible for a Brazilian university to take part in the TechConnect in a pioneering way. “We are opening doors for other universities and expanding the opportunities for marketing new technologies.” In the submission process, in which proposals from all over the world compete, Inova exhibited five technologies, and had three of them approved. Quite a noteworthy number, considering that only 40% of all the innovations presented were chosen.

The criterion for selection at Unicamp, which has 425 patents deposited, took into account the most recent patents that fitted the demand from the market, such as a new phytotherapic drug extracted from Bidens alba, popularly known as common beggarticks, with promising results for some kinds of cancer and leukemias (see the article on Unicamp's leadership of the patents ranking on page 28).

The second technology is a peptide, a molecule made up of 12 amino acids that fights the parasites that cause avian coccidiosis, a disease responsible for delayed growth of farm poultry and for bringing losses to the sector. The last patent chosen is an adhesive for metals like aluminum and steel, which dispenses with the prior treatment of the surfaces to be glued.

“Nowadays, the international companies have business executives who cover the world in search of a good technology”, says Rosana Di Giorgio, Inova’s director for Intellectual Property and Development of Partnerships. “That is why it is important to show these companies that Unicamp has good technologies, is willing to license them, and Brazil has favorable laws for this to occur.”

The study of the phytotherapic drug started in 2000, when researcher Maria Tereza Grombone Guaratini, under the Biota program, financed by FAPESP, began studying in her postdoctoral project the genetic variability of hairy beggarticks (Bidens pilosa), the most important invasive plant of soybean crops. “The study of the chemical compounds found in the plants, such as the sesquiterpenes and polyacetylenes, associated with chromosome research, made it possible to prove the existence of three species”, says Maria Tereza. Besides two species of hairy beggarticks, the researcher found that there was a third one, Bidens alba, original from Mexico and found only on the coast of São Paulo. The explanation for the restricted location of the plant in Brazilian territory is that it must have been brought by ships that docked at Santos.

In informal conversations about the plant, the researcher heard several people say that they had already used hairy beggarticks in the form of a plaster, to combat muscular pains, or even as tea. In the scientific literature she also found references to its antimicrobial, antihelminthic (against worms) and antiulcerogenic action of Bidens pilosa, in studies that looked for explanations for using this species in medical practices in Africa and in the Amazon. As Bidens is an invasive plant, it occurs in various countries of the world in agricultural areas or in places that have been environmentally modified. “The majority of the work was carried out by chemists who were speculating about the action of compounds found in the plant or by pharmacologists who were testing the extracts on animal models, without, however, verifying the real content of the extract”, says Maria Tereza. In the literature researched no reference was found to Bidens alba, which was revealed in the studies carried out by the researcher as a plant chemically different from the other two species of Bidens pilosa studied.

Maria Tereza then went to show the extract from the plant to Professor Alba Regina Monteiro Souza Brito, from the Physiology Department at Unicamp, who suggested taking the material to the Physiology Department of the Biosciences Institute of the São Paulo State University (Unesp) of Botucatu. There, a former student of Alba, Professor Clelia Akiko Hiruma Lima, of the Natural Products Laboratory, was willing to do tests with Bidens alba. Tested on mice with acute gastric ulcers, the dark green liquid worked like an excellent protector of the gastric mucus. “In the comparative tests, the extract from Bidens alba responded better than the commercial product most used for gastric ulcers”, the researcher says. The patent deposit of the extract with antiulcerogenic activities was made by Inova in 2004. Some companies have already been in contact with the agency, interested in carrying on with the work and in developing products.

The researches with Bidens alba have not stopped at this point. To find out whether the extract also showed an anticarcinogenic effect, the researcher took the liquid to be evaluated at Unicamp's Integrated Center for Childhood Onco-Hematological Researches (Cipoi), a basic and applied research laboratory intended for studying children suffering from acute leukemias. As the extract is divided into 73 fractions and the chemical composition of each one of them is not known with precision, three were chosen to be studied. Two of them showed very promising results.

The work of chemically separating each fraction was done by researcher Carmen Lúcia Queiroga, from the Pluridisciplinary Center for Chemical, Biological and Agricultural researches (CPQBA), also at Unicamp. When they received the extract, researchers Alexandre Eduardo Nowill and Gilberto Carlos Franchi Junior, from the Cipoi, a physician and a pharmacist who dedicate themselves to researches into leukemia, limited themselves to testing the new product, without knowing what it was.