Anti-inflammatory potential of essential oils: a technological prospection Alisson Texeira da Silva, João Vitor Jurema Segundo, Matheus Eufrazio do Nascimento, Lucas Tolentino Santos, Michely Correia Diniz

Abstract

Essential oils are natural products derived from aromatic plants that can be used as anti-inflammatory agents due to their diverse chemical components, acting in the signaling cascades and in the regulation of the pro-inflammatory gene expression. Thus, the essential oils present a great importance from the biotechnological point of view, and may be the fundamental basis for new discoveries in science. In this way, the present work carried out a technological prospection of the applications for patents referring to essential oils with anti-inflammatory action deposited in national and international databases such as INPI, WIPO, EPO and LENS. Analysing the obtained data, it was observed that China is the country with the largest number of patent applications filed, most of them belonging to section A of the International Patent Classification (IPC), which refers to human needs. Although Brazil is a country of great natural biodiversity, it has a low number of patents filed, demonstrating the low investment faced by science in the country.