The project encompasses plants from the following families: Palmae, Lamiaceae, Acanthaceae, Leguminosae and Gesneriaceae. Regarding the pharmacology, several models have been used like antinociceptive, antiinflammatory, antioxidant, molluscicidal, anti-diabetes, anti-microbial and nitric oxide production inhibition. Results showed that utilizing ethnopharmacological information is a very important way to search for new bioactive molecules. It is noteworthy to mention the activity of Açaí fruit extracts in the inhibition of nitric oxide production. It was also possible to identify flavonoids responsible for the antidiabetic activity in plants belonging to the family Leguminosae. Acanthaceae extracts showed important antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory activities, as they are very rich in steroids and triterpenes. The same could be said about plants belonging to Lamiaceae that gave several examples of this kind of pharmacological property due to its steroid and triterpenoid compounds. One specie of Lamiaceae also produced a great amount of dihydroxylated triterpenoids with great molluscicidal potencial. Palmae species, rich in fatty acids and steroids led to enriched extracts responsible for the anti-BPH activities. Plants belonging to Gesneriaceae were antioxidant due to their flavonoid content. Polar extracts and isolated molecules, isolated from many species were able to donate hydrogen radical to DPPH.

Although Bioactive Glasses (BG) has been progressively optimized, their preparation still uses toxic reagents and calcination at high temperatures to remove organic solvents. The drawbacks related to the BG synthesis were overcome by treating the ashes from the Equisetum hyemale plant in an ethanol/water solution to develop a bioactive composite [glass/carbon (BG-Carb)]. The BG-Carb was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and its chemical composition was assessed by inductively coupled plasma – optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES). Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) gas adsorption analysis showed a specific surface area of 121 m2 g-1. The formation of hydroxyapatite (HA) surface layer in vitro was confirmed by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR)analyse before and after immersion in simulated body fluid (SBF) solution. The Rietveld refinement of the XRD patterns and selected area electron diffraction (SAED) analyses confirmed HA in the sample before the immersion in SBF solution and after immersion in SBF solution; and increase of the HA layer on the sample surface, after the immersion in SBF solution. The BG-Carb samples showed no cytotoxicity on MC3T3-E1 cells and osteo-differentiation capacity similar to the positive control. Altogether, the BG-Carb material data reveals a promising plant waste-based candidate for hard and soft tissue engineering.