Technological prospecting of lippia with anti-hypertensive activity

Cardiovascular diseases are evaluated as a public health problem. They are directly related to the development of chronic injuries such as systemic arterial hypertension (SAH). Some secondary metabolites of medicinal plants have antihypertensive properties. Thus, the aim of this work is to investigate the potential for technological prospecting of the genus Lippia as a possible anti-hypertensive agent. Patent applications were investigated in the main databases: National Institute of Industrial Property of Brazil (INPI), European Patent Institute (EPO), World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and US Patents and Trademarks Office (USPTO), with publications between 1993 and 2014. The terms "vasorrelaxant", "hypotension" and "anti-hypertensive" were used in Portuguese and English, together with the Boolean operator “e”. The collected data were organized considering: the year, the country of filing, the state and the International Patent Classification. 114,291 patents were identified. Of the 24 results found at the INPI, Sergipe stands out with a total of 6 patents, followed by Ceará (n=5) and São Paulo (n=5). United States (USA) is the largest holder with 233 deposit requests, followed by European countries (n=46). The filing of patents started in 2007 (n=34), with emphasis on the year 2016 (n=69). It is observed that the largest proportion of patent applications is in category A6 (health, life protection, medical or veterinary science and hygiene) (n=91). After a broad bibliographic review on the subject, it was possible to observe that the associated terms in patent searches showed scarce results, which reinforces the innovative character of research involving the use of Lippia as antihypertensive agents.